09-10 analogy

Now some snow.

"We were somewhere around Barstow ... when the drugs began to take hold."

Sleet beginning to lightly coat things up a bit: cars, trash cans, that sort of thing. Just realized today's the 21st anniversary of the big surprise snow. Doesn't seem nearly that long ago. Last big one when I lived in Takoma Park. Got about a foot. Still have a picture of my beloved beagle at the time out in it, up on the mantlepiece.

Slain mix in up NW. EDIT: Actually more pingers now.

A few flurries on and off. Curiously, as much as I love snow, it's no bigger deal to me if it happens on Christmas than on any other day. Definitely in the minority there I suppose. Maybe because last year at this time, we were in Paris, which is the way to spend the holidays. That was worth 10 at-home Christmases with accumulating snows, or five Christmases with blizzards. Sure glad we went last year before COVID showed up. One of those trips when even though you know how much fun you're having at the time, in retrospect, you still think you weren't appreciating it enough while you were there.

That’s horrible. I am so sorry. Losing an animal companion is bad enough when it is kind of expected, when it’s a shocker like this ...

Yep, that's a good I-95 winter look. Sludge-fest outside now, but maybe we can extract something later this evening.

Why does that remind me of ....

Heaviest it's been all day right now.

Yeah it seems very much rate dependent. Moderate snow, as it is now, and no pinging. Light snow, a coupla pingers.

Nice moderate SN, with the side street beginning to whiten up pretty good now. I hear a ping or two on my inerrant (for that kind of thing) window A/C unit, but it's basically still all snow. EDIT: Gonna have to start thinking in terms of accumulations soon. Imagine that.

Still all snow in upper NW albeit light to moderate

Can't wait to hear that first ping of sleet. That'll probably be the highlight of this year so far.

One just floated by my window. Probably the highlight of this storm for me. EDIT: Make that two. Ripping!

Well according to the LWX probabilistic forecast, I have a 5% chance of getting 8”. So I’m going all-in on that. If someone asked me last year at this time, what are the odds a pandemic would more or less shut down the planet in 2020, I’d have said certainly less than 5%. So using this kind of impeccable logic, I fully expect a foot by Thursday morning.

I like living in a city — although Tenleytown is not exactly an urban environment— so my pissandmoan meter is keyed to other big cities. Westminster gets 20” and I get 2” doesn’t bother me in the least. Hell, in Feb 06 when I got 12” and Columbia MD — which is as I-95 corridor as it gets— got 20”, more power to ‘em. But let Philly proper gets 10” and I get 2”— which seems a reasonably possible scenario with this one — and that sticks in my craw. Yeah, NYC gets more snow than DC, but when CP gets 20” in Jan 2011 and I get 6” of slop .... ugh. And I guarantee the UHI effect is greater at Columbus Circle than Tenley Circle. Totally irrational, but there it is. That’s why December 2000 will always have a special exhibit in my personal Hall of Infamy, SJECS (Screwjob ECS) room. We all have our idiosyncrasies with regard to a hobby that some people probably consider a bit ... whimsical.

Except without the severe

I fight it even around 400' inside the Beltway. Last decent snow in Jan 19, DC more or less jackpotted, which Just Doesn't Happen. So on that basis alone, I am fully expecting a sloppy few inches while the Catoctins and the north Jersey shore do their usual epic nukage dance. It's the way our little corner of the snowiverse works. The solution would be to displace Sugarloaf Mountain 35 miles or so to the SE, but that might create other problems. Or, thinking real big, get rid of the Bay, Alleghenies, and Blue Ridge, and move DC 100 or so miles upriver. We'd probably still average under 20" a year.

Putting in a new deck from which I’ll be able to take great pics of all this winter’s nonexistent snow. Really looking forward to that.

Buddy Guy does a great version of Mustang Sally:

Some showers coming in but there's no umph behind them. Kind of disappointed in today. Got brushed by the cell that raised some havoc in Rockville. And of course the Baltimore/Annapolis axis seemed to get nailed pretty soundly. It's been noted that SPC marginal days seem to deliver just about as often as when we get tagged with an enhanced or (rarely) a MOD. It's hit and miss around here and that's no great secret. On severe days, there's usually always someone like the last one picked at the high school dance. Or the first one kicked off the raft floating in the middle of a vast and unforgiving ocean.

When I was up at Fort Reno, it was uncanny how ominous the sky to the NW was but then nothing as I glanced to the SW. Usually there's not such a dramatic cut off. At the south end of the cell, looking in the direction of Tysons, I saw a lowering and then an appendage coming out of it and I thought, oh, tail end Charlie, wall cloud and, yeah, that appendage is a FUNNEL CLOUD. Then I looked a little closer and realized the inner weenie had been given a bit too much leash.

Nothing going on here, I assure you. Our winds didn't gust much over 30.

Yeah I’m at ft Reno now and theres several CG to the nw

Poolesville looks like the place to be right now