gravitylover

So what are the chances of storms popping this afternoon? I want to go out for a ride but don't feel like getting caught in the woods in the rain.

I was on Fire Island on Friday and didn't notice anything too terrible. I don't know if it has picked up since, I hope not as we're thinking Montauk on Thursday.

Boy the weather was all over the map around the region yesterday. I drove through a couple of heavy sunshowers with rainbows galore, saw some amazing outflow boundaries whipping the trees into a frenzy and a few huge t-storm towers that had to have reached 40k at least. The drive down Rt 22 along and between the Taconics and Berkshires was super pleasant (other than the sluggish traffic that ran 15-20mph below the limit for 60 miles).

Nah that's bound to not work out I'm appreciating a bit of dryness after a year and a half of wet. I was on Fire Island yesterday and didn't see anything but now that you've said that I'm going to have to head down to the beach more often to see what I can see. My wife and kids want to head out to Montauk on Thursday so maybe...

That was some great thunder and heavy rain when the storms came through.

We popped to 91 muggy degrees here under full sun before the rain moved in. It has been just drizzle so far but it's awfully dark out there for 3:30 in the afternoon.

Yeah? I'm not feeling it and if I squint and tilt my head to the left when I'm looking at the radar I can see it moving north of east and sliding by to my north and west. I kind of like the way I'm seeing it but I guess if it's going to clear out again after I'm ok with it.

It was hot but not unbearable. I didn't spend too much time out in direct sunlight though, I'm still too smart to do that In the woods and in the yard it was alright, windows open in the car as often as AC on was nice enough. Ehh... summer. My wife and kidz don't agree Looks like today gets wet and it turns nice for a few days. Good, things are a bit dry and hard and need to be softened up. My garden has been marginally happy this year. Some things are decent but most aren't nearly as productive as I'd hoped. I don't know enough about this stuff but I'm learning. Creating good food that's good for us is a pretty good motivator to get better at it.

Well that soaking sure did dry up in a hurry. My garden was thirsty by 3pm this afternoon.

While it doesn't look like we got much in the LHV it did soak things down nicely. I drove a fair piece of the state yesterday. It started raining on the Taconic at 7:20 and pretty much didn't stop the rest of the 500 miles I covered. It was raining in Old Forge and NW of there, poured in Utica and down through the eastern Fingerlakes and all the way through the Catskills. On the plus side everything is super green and lush. Looks like a warm one coming up the next few days.

I'm not a big bug fan but as long as they leave me alone I'll coexist with them reasonably well. I don't have much love for these huge spider crickets we have, they started coming out in force last year and now they're just overwhelming. Fkn things are big and they jump all over the place when you try to squash them. When you do get to squash one they explode and it splatters. Gross...

Are we really going to see 2+" tomorrow and will the wind be bad? How long into Thursday is this system going to hang around?

Same for me. Warm and dry is kind of nice but a bit of rain late tomorrow would be welcome, it's starting to get a bit dusty.

You'd rather it was cold, wet and dreary? This is perfect for heavy yard work just think of all the water weight you're losing to sweat and evaporation. I'm down 3 pounds in the last few days.

Yeah once it dried out things went to hardpan and dust in a hurry, faster than I thought it could that's for sure.

Yeah we're loaded with 'em here this year too. Beautiful morning. Get out there and do something!

@DRVTS check your pm's. I wasn't home while it was raining yesterday but my wife said it came down pretty hard for a while. Today we got a heavy t-storm, no lightning but a few good rumbles and a few minutes of crazy heavy rain. Looks like it was ~.3" combines for the 2 days. It sure does feel summery now doesn't it? After another long, cool, wet spring I didn't think it would ever get here. Things have dried out pretty nicely but, man, the undergrowth is for real this year.

Yeah I drove through your area and it was barely wet compared to areas just a bit further east. West of you it was dry. There were some wonderful towers and cloud formations but almost entirely over the higher terrain so Rt 17 was dry the whole way. That Canadian smoke though WOW. The light was so muted and understated for the last 3 days in upstate and western NY but the glare was intense. Sometimes it was almost too dark for sunglasses but you needed them to deal with the glare. If you haven't been to far western NY you need to go, the place is beautiful. There's nothing out there, a few neat small towns and a whole bunch of quiet with some fun roads to drive. Ellicotville is neat and worth a few days of brewery visits, mt biking and fishing. It's a mountain town without real mountains and a great outdoorsy vibe.

So much smoke.

Yeah but that's not what I was talking about. I'm wondering where the cold balance is. Somewhere there ought to be cold moving south in the hemisphere to balance out the heat pumping north. It's just a weird theory that I've been playing with for a while. I'm an hour south of Buffalo at the moment and they were talking about this in the bar at dinner. I had an observation today that didn't surprise me but was cool to confirm. The Great Lakes have a very similar stabilizing influence over where the t-storm line pops in the afternoon as the ocean and LI Sound do. It was beautiful along the lakeshore this afternoon in the Buffalo area but you could see the storm line inland. When I headed south the elevation jumps from lake level to 2k in no time and there were storms bouncing around, a few wet spots, but huge towers a few more miles east the whole drive.

On my drive today up Rt 17 and ultimately to the central Fingerlakes the smoke density varied significantly. In some spots it was crystally clear and others it was quite the opposite. Pumping that kind of heat up here where is the opposite occurring in the hemisphere? I think of these things as "balancers" regulating hemispheric temps so if we are pumping heat north somewhere is dumping cold south. Uncomfortably ugly thought...

My observation for this morning is that it's absolutely beautiful outside. I've been working around the yard and garden for the last hour or so and it feels great. If the weather was just like this, no warmer and no cooler, for 6 months a year it would be wonderful. We had a super thick dew this morning and the fog watered the foliage sufficiently for the day pretty much like in the coastal range areas of the Pacific coast where Redwoods grow a few hundred feet tall with ~20" of rain a year. While I'd love to live in the coast range chances are it will never happen so if anyone can figure out a way to keep the weather like this here I'm in for support

67* feels nice after the last few days

Looks like I got .2. There were a few stations around me that got as much as .5. It was a popcorn kinda day and some places stayed dry while others got soaked.

Ooh if you're looking for a new bike I might have a smokin' deal for you. I'm the Norco rep for NY and I have a demo bike that I need to turn back into $$. I got it just before my heart attack so it only has 4 miles on it, the thing is better than new because the brake pads are bedded in properly. I'll make a pretty serious effort to get to you if you want to take it for a ride. It just poured here, well Danbury but it's pretty close to home so good enough These tropical convective popcorn t-storms are always entertaining.