MN Transplant

17 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

Tomorrow looks spectacular

Confirmed

Tomorrow looks spectacular

Good soaker.  3.20" for the period.

5 hours ago, RodneyS said:

April 2023 averaged 62.1 degrees at DCA, tied for third warmest April in DC history.  Moreover, January-April 2023 is the warmest 4-month (120-day) start to a calendar year in DC history, at 50.8 degrees-- surpassing 2017 (also 120 days) at 50.2 degrees and 2012 (121 days) at 50.1 degrees.

Blazing start to the year.

Quick .5”.  Enjoying the thunder.

2.26”.  That was perfect.

Raining harder now than at any point since the 1pm hour

1.82”.  Starting to see some of that enhancement as the little vort gets closer.

15 minutes ago, mattie g said:

Rains really held on despite the radar looking like the back end was arriving hours and hours ago.

We really do end these kinds of storms well. Love winter storms when things fill in, and even em when the radar is unimpressive the OTG reality is good precip.

The models did a great job with that.

8 hours ago, RDM said:

H2O,

    Always hoped that FF Water was working with VDOT on scheduling repairs around paying schedules for the reason you raised (not sure if you worked for FF Water or another org).  Seen a lot of examples that implied that coordination was a bit askew.  

    A question....   That's a really nice looking trench MN Transplant posted.  Looks to be about 2 feet deep - or so.  What is the standard depth for water mains around here?  Someone told me it is 2 feet, but that seems shallow.  Nat Gas is 2' min depth according to Wash Gas rep.  Back home in Ohio H2O and Nat Gas depth is 4'.  (much colder there).  

    Had major issues back in 78 when we didn't get above freezing for over a month.  The frost line got down to below 5 feet, which burst a lot of mains.  Trying to fix a broken main when the ambient temps are below 0F must be one of the most miserable jobs ever.  

 

 

The trench was definitely on the order of 4' deep.  The guys who were down in there were up to their chests.  Our gas lines must have been deeper because they only had to dig around the existing water supply line to the house and not the gas line.

1.08”.  Good stuff.

1 minute ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Short term guidance starting to highlight some beefier totals along the US 29 corridor, somewhere between Laurel and Fairfax. Wonder if there's some kind of low level convergence being picked up by the HRRR/NAM family?

Yeah, the big totals are coming from some training that goes on in the afternoon on the HRRR.

00z HRRR is a beaut.

21 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Interesting @MN Transplant. We'll see how accurate this is for the weekend. Maybe another tool in the kit for future events?

Right now they are only going to be running this during the Spring Experiment period (mostly May), but it is forward-looking towards what we will see in the future with modeling.  

12 hours ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Not sure how accurate this is, but implies a soaker ahead.

 

I do know something about this.  NCAR is running FV3-based ensembles at 3km over the US (13km global) out to 204 hours and MPAS ensembles at 3km over the US (15km global, tapered) out to 132 hours.  Just from a couple of days of looking, it seems like the probability matched mean is generally higher than the straight ensemble mean.  Here is where we are for the first event:

FV3

MPAS

Trace.  On to Friday.

The NAM Nest has been insisting on some showers Wednesday afternoon.  Maybe we can get some rain on rain action this week.

1 hour ago, H2O said:

Ah my old job.  Surveying for replacing old water mains that break all the time.  Or is this a bigger main to go along with some new water tank deal?  I know they were doing a bunch of stuff to bolster up the pressures and stagnant water issues right when I left.  

The process in which this all works is so fun.  

I think this is related to the new water tower that will be going up in my neighborhood in a few years.  Probably an excuse to replace what I assume are almost 60 year old lines anyway.  I’ll give credit to the different agencies, we’ve had water line work and gas line work, and are on the schedule for street repaving by VDOT.  They organized it well.

@H2O

New water main!  Watching the guy remote control the compactor is entertaining.

0.55” which brings me to 0.89” on the month.

Euro with a solid 1" in the metro corridor.  

57 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

I’m getting intrigued for the late week storm. Good track, high to the north…temps are a little warm, but hopefully dynamical cooling will help 

48 and rain, baby!

13 hours ago, Ji said:

Crazy Joel embids real estate agent is the 2001 bust meteorologist John Bolaris

That is a bizarre find.

The good news from the models is that none of them are really showing a true failure mode.  They all have widespread precip, almost all 0.5"+.

In my mind, a 2015-16-like season is still a winner because it contained a truly historic snowstorm.  I think it would be different if we were talking about a region wide 12-18” storm.