Hurricane Agnes

Didn't quite hit 90 today (only made it to 89 because as that storm passed way south of here, the sky clouded up and dropped the temps), but had a little fog this morning with a low of 71. Currently 80 with the dp at 73, so it's starting to steam up again. As a sidenote, my little lightning sensor had 2 hits right around the time that little storm complex blew through southern Chesco, Delco, and into Delaware and New Jersey. In fact, that little thing managed to hang together until it finally sortof dissipated right outside of AC.

Finally got chance to go through Mt. Holly's Post Tropical Cyclone report and there were 7 confirmed tornadoes in the CWA from here - https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?new&prod=XXXPSHPHI&wfo=phi -or- (alternate) https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&issuedby=PHI&product=PSH&format=CI&version=1&glossary=1&highlight=off

Wow. Meteorolgically-speaking, this year has definitely been one with extremes. And we haven't even gotten to the peak of hurricane season yet.

Just as a what-the-hell look at all the lightning from yesterday's storm and the data that was available about it yesterday, I did some screenshots last night from lightningmaps.org (checking off the option to also include Blitzortung.org's data) - (1) screen cap of the 1 hr period shown on lightningmap.org (between ~7:30 pm EDT - ~8:30 pm EDT) (2) screen cap of the 24 hr period shown on lightningmap.org (including the same time frame as #1 and if you look closely, there are gray boxes with white numbers indicating the estimated number of strikes in those areas, which was an option that could be selected for view) (3) screen cap of the Ambient sensor shown for a 24 hour period (~6:00 am EDT 8/7/20 - ~6:00 am EDT 8/8/20) highlighting the peak time of strikes, with the upper curve representing the cumulative number of strikes and the lower one showing the strike rate (4) screen cap of the same as #3 but showing the data for the past week (the station was setup and operational on 8/1/20 and the sensor on 8/6/20) I think for normal thunderstorms you get some tiny spike lines here and there, with maybe a few sharp peaks if the storms go on a bit longer (although looking at that data over a week or month's interval, any peak will get compressed into a spike). But yesterday seems to have been nuts. As a disclaimer, I've only had this thing for a couple days and am still tweaking the location and sensitivity and whatnot. It supposedly has a range of detection up to about 25 miles, and it's not actually measuring the exact location of the strike but supposedly the distance from the sensor to the boundary of where the strikes are occurring and the sensor is supposedly directional (so unless way up high away from obstructions, it might miss some occurring in certain directions). However depending on the atmospheric conditions, it has been apparently found to pick up strikes from further away (at least per some people who have been testing the Ecowitt version earlier this year). One downside of it is that it only has an operational temp range of 32F - 122F, meaning it is not really a cold-weather device, and around here, we get can get convection in the winter, including thundersnow on occasion. So I do have it inside near a window at the moment (and there are dip switch settings for it to designate whether it is "inside" or "outside", which will alter the sensitivity thresholds, although you can set it for "outside" even if it is "inside" or vice versa, if threshold sensitivities need to be optimized). Some of those who have been using them outside generally have reported placing them in a dry location, although a few actually put them in some kind of vented enclosure that fits similarly-sized temp/humidity sensors, if not placed in an attic or under a roof eave/gable or porch, etc. In any case, will be seeing how things go with this geek add-on sensor and considering we really didn't have many thunderstorms last year, at least so far this year, I seem to have lucked out with some this week to test it/tweak it.

For some obs, I did eventually hit 80 as a high yesterday, with a total rainfall of 0.38" (the heaviest of yesterday's event occurred pretty far south of here). Although I'm not seeing any fog here (at least yet), it's currently 69 and humidity of 97% and mostly cloudy just before sunrise.

The way the docs were written, it is detecting EMPs and has some kind of filtering algorithm to try to filter out common electronic source pulses. It's an Ambient Weather sensor (manufactured by Fine Offset for companies like Ecowitt, Ambient Weather, and a few others) for a couple models of their weather stations. Ambient literally only made it available about a month ago and they are still tweaking the firmware for the station dashboard to include it and to publish on their public PWS site. https://www.ambientweather.com/amwh31l.html

I did go on and buy that lightning detector (was delivered Wednesday and I set it up yesterday) and I have been trying out the different sensitivities on it by changing the dip switches. I had gotten it to what seemed to be a reasonable setting after going from nothing with an obvious lightning flash to apparent interference signals (registering counts with nothing on radar), but with the current setting over the past 2 1/2 hours, I've registered 327 strikes. I was initially thinking maybe I'm getting some interference and false hits, but a couple live lightning maps were verifying it and it didn't start registering anything until around 5:15 pm today, with the current setting configured yesterday afternoon and nothing registering after that until this storm today. It has finally settled down in the past 20 minutes.

Wow - a Rutger's station reported an 89 mph gust in that area under the tornado warning. Am guessing if it wasn't a tornado, it was definitely straight line wind!

Mesonet in New Castle reporting about 4.06" of rain in 30 minutes.

The heaviest had been passing over you guys. It is south of me. At least it is moving faster than it was doing earlier today.

Yikes. I just remember those pics last year when you having a new drainage system put in with French drains and whatnot. I know getting 6" in way less in an hour wasn't on anyone's radar.

Have only started getting some rain here in the past 10 minutes or so, with about 0.4"/hr. But getting a lot of thunder and lightning. Currently @ 0.13".

Wow. I was gonna ask how your whole backyard drain project was faring this year!

I have been watching that cluster much of the afternoon and it has been really slow-moving and generally just training over those poor areas in Berks that were hit the past week.

My new little lightning detector is working and getting a workout!

Well my high made it up to 82 today and it's currently 77 and mostly cloudy. Here is Mt. Holly's first PNS posted this afternoon, for the tornadoes spawned by TS Isaias (more to come later) -

Nice shot! Reminded me of this though -

Soon as I saw your post about "sun" (it has been overcast here), out it popped here. That might hasten my turning the AC back on.

I ended up getting 0.22" out of the thundershower earlier this morning. That also allowed me to finally turn off the central air after a couple weeks running non-stop. Even though the dews are not in the steamy range, it's still humid (76%) with a current temp of 76 and dp 68, so may be turning the AC back on shortly.

Have been getting a little thunderstorm. I had decided to go on and get a lightning sensor for my new station and had set it up right before Isaias but it didn't register anything. Since there was obvious lightning the past 15 minutes or so, I have been fooling with the dip switches and finally got a config that correctly picked up a strike @8:35 am. Current temp is down to 68 with a thundershower and have 0.08" of rain so far.

All kinds of stuff going on down in Delaware and South Jersey (had to move to DOX). Am getting some light rain here with temp 70 and dp 66.

Some storm stats from Mt. Holly - Storm loops -

Following this up but I saw a brief blip in the Inquirer that it was confirmed and found this (they are still writing it up and details will come in a later PNS - 6 tornadoes in the CWA) - https://nwschat.weather.gov/p.php?pid=202008051038-KPHI-NOUS41-PNSPHI