09-10 analogy

Moderate rain a hour or so ago, now nothing, but distant rolling thunder when it's cloudy, which for some reason I love. Seems like the goods might be on my doorstep but I'm used to the LWX radar and it's down and I'm not rich like the rest of you folks to be able to afford the fancy stuff. If it was a killer band of snow just off to my north and west with me getting nothing, I'd be tearing my hair out (of course I shave my head so that's kinda irrelevant) but with convection, I can still hear the thunder and like I said, distant thunder with cloudy, humid weather is a nice vibe for me.

Hard to get robust lapse rates and shear, and timing, all aligned together around here. But we don't get day 4 outlooked by SPC too often around here, either (not that northern parts of the sub are). EDIT: Not that it means anything, but this has been an aberrant June, what with all the tornadoes in the South (when their peak is usually well over by now) and then the tornadoes in Texas the other day. (I read somewhere that Texas hadn't had an (E)F4 after June 10th until this year, with Matador almost certainly being (E)F4 at least.)

Yeah looks like that one's wide left for me. Hearing the rolling thunder from it, though. Loud booms with CG close strikes are great, but sometimes just that low rumbling is soothing ... at least to me. And since it's a holiday, and cloudy and muggy out, there's not much activity -- vehicle or pedestrian -- on the streets, so it's quieter than a normal summer evening here. Relative silence a nice aural-point to the thunder.

Two rarities for this season today: humidity and the distant sound of thunder.

Not good, right into the urban area. And during rush hour and holiday weekend traffic.

Oh I have no problem with it at all, I find them informative reading too. It just struck me as unusual. But maybe it happens more than I think.

There seems to be an awful lot of MDs out given there's no widespread severe outbreak going on. https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/

An MSS (mesoscale smoke system)? I mean, it's not convection, but it's horizontal dimension seems > 50 miles, and it sure is persistent.

I'd say so. Even if there was some competition (which I can't think of, 2023 has to be the most boring year in recent memory up to this point), this is historically noxious air. (Even the fleeting Xmas cold wave was 2022.) Shame that's it coincided with such (otherwise) conventionally beautiful weather. This isn't exactly fun, but I'll probably remember it more than some 4-8" snowstorms (not that those occur anymore around here.) Kind of like the March 2018 long-term wind event: just very unique.

I was wondering about that too. Birds this morning were singing away as usual. Still, it's significantly better (at least in T-town) than it was earlier today.

There's your next month's chat opener.

"I love the smell of burning Canadian forests in the morning ... that burnt grilled food in a trash bag smell ... it smells of ... victory ... someday these forest fires will end, son."

Yeah, the smell doesn't really bring out the marshmallows over the old campfire vibe. Maybe we need a new thread: "The Great Haze Event of June 2023."

Add haze to fog, nonconvective wind, and heat to things we do well around here. Though I have to admit, the heat has been a welcome absence so far. I usually associate poor air quality with heat, so this little episode of Canadian Wildfire Visitation is somewhat dissociative, especially reading the 32 degree ob from West Va. EDIT: Opened my window and within 15 minutes my throat started feeling scratchy. I really need to go up to Fort Reno and see if I can see the skyline of Tysons like is normally visible.

Shouldn't be much of an impact locally. After all, there's no trees left and most of the construction in the DMV ought to be able to handle 140 mph straight-line winds. Outer Banks are gone for good, but, hey, things happen.

Some pretty heavy rain at times. Distant thunder

Mawar’s eastern sibling loves it some Chesapeake. I see they’ve got Ophelia lined up as a name for the Atlantic. So because they’re running short of “I” names (I mean, rilly, “Idalia”?), they ought to go full Bard and put “Iago” into the rotation.

Wow! Great going and welcome back to the DMV! Hope u can work some magic at WPC to improve our winters.

Just got back from picking up my kid from uni {as the Brits say) in central NYS. Very cool seeing the green blush of spring in the trees get lighter and lighter as we drove north.

I guess what trees were left over from your May blizzard were removed by Bret. It's gonna look like eastern Colorado around here!

Derek Jacobi (I think that was the actor) was outstanding; his performance is kind of lost in the shuffle of so many fine ones. When Theoden is riding along the line of the Rohirrim, tipping spears and making that, as you aptly put it, his “just f**k this” speech … that just pure Big Movie excellence.

That's one of the few parts of the movie I didn't like: how easily the Lord of the Nazgul, who was basically a rogue Numenorean with a neat ring, schooled Gandalf. Gandalf, especially in his reincarnation as the White, was a demigod, more or less, in the class of Sauron himself; both were Maiar, after all. In the book JRRT left their confrontation at the gate unresolved, as the LOTN was called away by the arrival of the Rohirrim right before they threw down. Maybe, amped up by Sauron's power, the LOTN would have prevailed over Gandalf, but he wouldn't have been much use afterwards. As the Grey, Gandalf beat the Balrog: another Maiar. As the White, in the book and movie, he broke Saurman, another Maiar and formerly the head of the wizards' order, rather easily. So I really think Gandalf wouldn't have had that much trouble with the LOTN, who was after all just a man with an extraordinarily powerful trinket. (After all, as the Grey, Gandalf held off six or seven Nazgul on Weathertop, and they "retreated before my wrath.") It certainly wouldn't have been the squash match Peter Jackson made it. Sorry about the tirade but this scene took away from what was, otherwise, a fantastic rendition of the books.

I’m here now going to be great!

Glad to see the storms speeding up a bit. We're going up to Baltimore this evening to see the Ninth at my old alma mater (Hopkins, Shriver Hall) and I don't want what promises to be a wonderful evening (good friend of ours is playing in the orchestra) be ruined by storm-induced traffic jams. @Maestrobjwa are you a part of this? That would be cool, to see you play as well. (I don't know how to notify a member thru the "@")