CoolHandMike

Yup, 4.8, northern NJ

I think we might have just had a minor earthquake up here in Reading. Can anyone else confirm? It's not showing up on the USGS shake map yet, if it even was one.

Hey what site is that from? I know about the one for Chester County, but that one seems more regional.

Ok, it feels weird to have 3am thunderstorms when it's only 44°F outside. That's a whole lot of instability moving through our area at the moment.

I was going to post this on the obs thread but since I went off on such a huge tangent, I figured it would be better to post here. Some beautiful asperitus clouds today in my neck of the woods today. Sadly I did not think to capture pics. (I will forever refer to them as Undulatus Asperitus.) Regarding flooding... I've lived here for 3.5 years, and before last July's eleven inches of rain in three days, we'd get a hard rain, and the dry sump well in my house would remain bone dry throughout. There wasn't even a sump installed when we bought it! It was literally just a 2' deep pit in my basement with gravel at the bottom. Even during the 5" we received when the Skook flooded in August of '21 it remained dry. Now though, anything over an inch of precip, and my basement would flood if I hadn't installed a pump last year (and the battery backup pump). What I don't yet understand (totally expected, given my rather poor understanding of hydrogeology, despite majoring in geoscience) is how my local subterranean hydro has changed so much just from one event. I live almost on top of a low rise, in an albeit, well-developed suburb. Now that I think of it, the local "water authority" (yes, they call themselves that--the regular "municipal authority" has actually taken pains to explain how the two are separate--gotta love local politics) has been severely mismanaged, and has only recently been taken to task for overall poor maintenance of the supply system, shifting blame of stormwater handling to the municipality. Long story short, we've had at least three water main breaks here in the past several years, the last one occurring during that July flooding event. The water authority blamed the municipality for poor maintenance of the drainage system, which caused excessive erosion which knocked out the water main. But the mains are ~100 years old, and proper maintenance might have prevented the break despite the flooding/erosion. And there's also the question of millions of dollars in some kind of literal "rainy-day fund" that the water authority had just been kind of sitting on? The whole thing smacks of corruption at the local level, and finally last year, with the threat of dissolution BY the municipality, the water authority was forced to take on members of our local council on their board. There've been no water main breaks since, and I've seen more local maintenance occurring in the area, so... yay? But all of that still doesn't explain why my (nearly) hilltop basement wants to flood now with anything nearing an inch of rain when it's been bone dry for the majority of the past 3.5 years. (And for the ~30 years prior, as there was absolutely zero evidence of any kind of flooding or dampness in the unfinished basement when we bought the house in 2020.) Groundwater flow continues to mystify. As an aside, can you believe at least two families before ours owned this house with a completely unfinished basement and did absolutely nothing at all with it??? The mind boggles. That's prime woodshop territory! It also now includes a walled-off pantry, a seedling nursery area, and walled-off storage area for all of the regular house stuff. I just refuse to accept that my "hilltop" basement could simply flood at any moment, but here we are.

Got about 5" here in Muhlenberg. This stuff was an absolute pleasure to snowblow/shovel compared to the last one.

Glad you guys are cashing out! We've got maybe 2" here.

I'm just north of Reading proper. Looks like a couple of inches here so far.

That's aimed right at me. Nice. Temp down to 32.5 and continuing to fall. Light snow and the streets are wet.

Also light snow up here in Reading. 34.7°F.

Clouds just started moving in. Down to 40° after hitting a high of 44 about an hour and half ago.

You guys sure are in a mood today, eh? It's all good, I'm here for it. Let's go for snow-on-snow!

I like our odds:

Not seeing it...?

Got down to a downright frosty 17°F last night. I didn't think we were predicted to get that low this week.

Snow has stopped, and now huge "chunks" of snow are falling periodically from the trees.

A friend in Phoenixville is reporting the same.

Closing in on 8". Bigger flakes mixing in. Temp is up a degree to 32.1 from a couple of hours ago.

Measured a full 7" on the back deck. Left the yardstick standing up, this stuff is thicc

My goodness! 4" easily on the deck and just chucking it down. Trees are all heavily coated.

Still all rain here, but it's close.

Unless snowing while it's 41°F is a new thing, no, it's not snowing in KoP atm.

41.9 and DP 38.6 here now. Light drizzle. Really hoping for something awesome, but not holding my breath.

LOL what even is this and who is behind it??? I might have to configure a dedicated RasPi that just shows this. It's wonderful, thank you!