09-10 analogy

Miserable night holding the line against water in the basement. Sump pump, water vac, dehumidifier, all instruments were on "GO." That instead of ornamenting the tree. Xmas carols just don't sound as good when you emptying water from the vac down the commode. Almost as much trouble with flooding last night as with some of the late July downpours. 

Still primarily sleet here in up nw. Look real hard, there's a flake or two still. Probably some rain as well. Holding 32 but that won't last long. 

EDIT: Yeah rain really beginning to assert itself now. This was a tidy little number, though. Measured a shade under 2" about an hour ago when I came in. 

4 minutes ago, Deck Pic said:

Just looked at my records going back to 04-05 and I got 0.25” on 11/23/05 and 0.25” on 11/26/14.  So this is a pretty big deal. 

Offhand I can only think of two November events better than this: Veterans Day (of course) and Thanksgiving (1989?). And this is a daytime deal whereas the Thanksgiving storm, I think, was overnight. So this might be 2A. I remember a great squall came through in 1995 with wind and snow but I don't recall that much sticking (in Takoma Park, at least). So it's been almost 30 years ... I'm sure there was probably something else in that period that might have approached this, but I don't remember it. 

Sleeters but still a little snow falling ... holding out hope. 

In CAD we trust.

Eyeballin', but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not at least at an inch. 

This is the highlight of my month (it's been a stressful one).

Gotta say, the size of these flakes and the rate they're falling ... it's somewhat reminiscent of how I remember Veterans' Day.  

And a minute after I wrote this, the snow's practically stopped ... one more reason why it's never a good idea to exaggerate, even in jest ...

This has to be a first; video of being adrift in a upper-scale cat 4 storm surge. 

Just now, wendy said:

He finally admitted they're in trouble from the surge. They're trying to get into a house to get some elevation, is that right?

Yea, they seem to be trying to break in; I think the house is locked. 

It sounds like someone on the phone was pressuring Adair and his partner to go to Mexico and Adair was reluctant but he did it, and now they seem to be in trouble. 

I wonder when Mr. Adair intends to decamp from his location.

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8 hours ago, hickory said:

If the levees would have never failed around New Orleans. That hurricane would have only been remembered by residents of south Mississippi.

Those "only high impacts in south Mississippi" killed 240 people. Take away all the other fatalities in N.O and elsewhere completely and Katrina's death toll would have still exceeded any other hurricane in the CONUS since Camille (and Katrina's surge killed more along the Gulf Coast than Camille's did, I believe). And Katrina profoundly affected the political and social discourse in this country in a way few other natural disasters ever have. There is NO downplaying of Katrina possible and that would be the case even if the levees had held.  

Round two of the T&L variety show cranking to my NW in MontCo. 

These past few weeks have produced some big boomers IMBY. Not much wind and no hail, but the cannonade action has been impressive. 

Now the second round today of full-figured raindrops coming through.

Last night's T&L was as robust as any storm's had this summer. Some pretty close strikes, one of the transmission towers near here was hit, maybe the first time this year that's happened.

Seeing the EC video, first thing it reminded me of was some of the tsunami footage from the Tohoku quake back in ‘11.

Not bad overall; it had a great look as it approached: well-defined shelf cloud, greenish tint below it in the vicinity of Tyson's. As ominous looking a storm as I've seen in some time. Almost had that "mothership" look, or at least "grandmothership." Best wind was about 2/3 through; it might have approached 50 MPH, but only briefly, and coincided with some legitimately torrential rain -- it's always nice to see the "curtains" of rain envelop everything for a moment or two. As is often the case, and as others have remarked, the best T&L came toward the end. No hail, but with a fairly new car that I have to park outside, hail is not something I want to deal with.  

Yeah, if you live in Norman or Wichita Falls or Venezuela, this wouldn't even register. But we live in the mid-Atlantic, where the weather just doesn't get too extreme (fog and HHH aside) except on rare occasion.   

Seems like it packed a bigger punch out toward Dulles/Leesburg.  

Very ominous to the west; haven’t seen any CG yet

Up at Ft Reno, just heard first distant thunder, though maybe that from the little flare up near 495/270?

edit: which just seemed to die out.

one thing about t storms and big w storms — the waiting just before is almost as good as the event, at least for me

On 3/29/2018 at 2:32 PM, Eskimo Joe said:

I think so many people chose the Derecho for 3 reasons:

1. It was relatively unpredicted.  There was some wavering meso guidance in the 12 to 18 hours leading up to the event of an MCS coming through, but nothing to the extent that happened.
2. It occurred very late at night.  Most of the severe weather in this happens before 9pm and this was almost 2 hours outside our climo window.  
3. The heat that followed the storm was significantly magnified by the event.  So many people lost power that it essentially shoved folks back 20 or 30 years to the 70s and 80s when not many people had AC.  It was rather anomalous.

As I recall, the forecast that Friday morning was for the possibility of severe later on, but the focus for a severe outbreak was on Saturday.

I remember taking my dog for a walk about 15 minutes before it hit and seeing lightning flashing in the sky to the west. It was just ridiculously hot for that time of night. I had a vague idea of going up to Fort Reno to watch it come in, but the dog wanted to get back inside. Most uncharacteristic; I usually have to drag her back inside after a walk. I think it was just too dang hot for her, and not that she knew something freakish was coming and she wanted to take shelter. Anyway I'm glad the dog won out. I wouldn't have wanted to be rushing back to my house once all hell broke loose, with a traumatized beagle in tow.  

Two years ago right now -- 1130 or so -- it was really kicking into overdrive. Midday Saturday, it was snowing heavier than I could recall with any other storm with the possible exception of 1983 (which I don't remember that well). Heavier than anything I remembered from 96. I can sympathize with those who prefer Snowpocalypse to the February storms. Snowpocalypse was a delight. Snowmaggeon was an event; the whole 10-day period was almost trial by snow; the stuff kept coming down and, once the majesty of the blizzard was over, the charm began to wear off. But the December snowstorm was perfect in practically every way: the holiday season, the best part of it occurred during daylight hours, cold but not brutally, no sleet, enough wind to keep things interesting, generous accumulations. I was out and about in it a lot more than I was during Snowmaggedon. I remember it more clearly, too, because at the time I was thinking, OK, I better commit every moment to memory because the next one will be, if I'm lucky, at least six years (and not six weeks) away.

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As the reality of DC snow climatology reasserts its noxious self, that winter just seems more and more surreal.

By the time I'd registered it as an earthquake, it was over. My impressions of it can't be separated from the points of reference I was using in real time to filter the experience. So it's hard to be totally objective about what I felt at the time; it really was something very unique because I have no antecedents to the experience of having the structure around me shake like hell for a couple of seconds. You experience a wind gust of 70 MPH, your point of reference can be a wind gust of 20; a heat index of 122, well heat indicies of 105 happen just about summer around here -- hell, you can get that in a sauna. But out of nowhere, a house staring to shudder like it's got a fever that breaking -- that's a bit of an outlier in my life and, I imagine, in the lives of millions of people around here who've never put in time in earthquake zones.

There was a sound that crescendoed just when the "violent" -- yeah, that's the proper word to use, I don't need the Mercalli scale to tutor me on how to use the language -- vibration began. What made it violent wasn't the intensity of the shaking but that it was so unexpected and (in my experience) unprecedented. In retrospect, my attention was arrested by three things: how the chair I was sitting in shook , how the windows rattled, and how my elderly dog slept through the whole thing. In the immediate aftermath, I wondered if in fact it was an earthquake, because I looked to the dog for validation and he was snoring away as if nothing had happened. There was a brief nanosecond when I wondered whether I'd somehow imagined the whole thing, or that maybe my mail was being delivered by a Gorgon.

You win the internets.

My 16 year old beagle slept right through it. The other dog wasn't particularly impressed by it, either.

Was two distinct periods here. First one was relatively minor, then a pause for a few seconds, then stronger shaking (made my computer screen shake). Are those the p and s waves? Or vice versa?

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There was a distinct rumbling beforehand that only registered in my mind in retrospect of the actual -- and pronounced -- shaking afterwards. I might not have even noticed the first period if it hadn't been for the second; I might have just figured it was a truck going by or something. And there did seem to be a pause between the two.

Top that, Irene.