CoolHandMike

Has pumpkin spice beer come and gone yet? I seem to recall it being introduced and subsequently running out earlier and earlier every year since it blew up in the late 2000's. My wife used to crave it so I was always on the lookout for it. She stopped drinking beer a couple of years ago so it's kind of slipped off my radar, but for a while I was amazed at just how much earlier and earlier it came and went each year. Like, wouldn't you want to sell it for consumption in the fall, between Halloween and Thanksgiving? I never understood the weird market timing behind that. 80 days. Nice. Please don't stop showing us (me) these reminders.

Yeah we have a portable that I can set up if need be, thanks for asking. I sent an email to the sales guy that sold us the system and he already replied that he's on it, which I honestly wasn't expecting on a holiday. I can't fault them for their overall responsiveness at least. I was an electronics tech for over 20 years in a former life. While I may not know much about HVAC, I do know a thing or two about troubleshooting. Something is obviously faulty and it's way beyond time to continue fiddling with settings and power-cycling. It's time to start swapping out components. Hell, I don't care at this point if they need to send out an entire team to do a full reinstall, it just needs to work. We didn't spend a ton of time and effort (and money) researching new systems to NOT have working A/C this summer. Sorry for ranting guys. Back to the weather. It's hot. Looking forward to fall already. On the plus side, I lost a bunch of weight recently and I can tell the heat isn't bothering me this year as much as in years past. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. Fireworks are still popping off. I heard sirens earlier, and you always hate to hear that on July 4th. Hope everyone's ok.

Looks like a hot and humid next couple of days on tap. And wouldn't you know it, my A/C still isn't working right, even after our latest service tech visit yesterday (the third since it was installed on May 5th). Left another message requesting service and fired off a very strongly-worded letter email letting all and sundry know just how dissatisfied and disappointed we have been with this service. Each time, a tech has come out and has supposedly "found" some little setting, or some "loose wire" or something that wasn't quite right, and each time, they've power cycled the system and like magic, it suddenly works fine. Until it suddenly doesn't. I'm done being nice. This shit is getting fixed or replaced. FFS, enough already. /rant Stay cool, everyone else.

.01" overnight. Today's threat of rain seems to have evaporated. Which is good, I guess, since I'll be manning the grill for a significant amount of time later today. Happy 4th everyone!

Nothing here thus far, but my parent's farm in SW Chester County have received almost 2" tonight. Question for the group: do you guys know if lightning detectors differentiate between cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground? I'm wondering what, if any, method sites like https://www.lightningmaps.org use. TIA~

Ok so thankfully a tornado did not touch down near my parents: https://www.inquirer.com/weather/july-4th-weather-philadelphia-tornado-chester-county-20230703.html

Yeah it's warrantied for a year and we are planning on buying the 10-year follow-up maintenance plan. They just need to get it to work consistently. We cannot be the only people to have this system installed; it's becoming increasingly frustrating why they can't seem to get it right. Planning on having strong words with their support in the morning and escalating as necessary. (Not going to go full on rage mode on the dispatcher, because it's not their fault and I'm not a jerk to people just doing their job. But this needs to be escalated, and it will be, so help me jebus.) 73°F/72 DP it's just gross outside right now, but at least the smoke has finally abated. It's 77 in my office right now. A/C is blowing at 65°F through the vents and barely making an impact. Ceiling fans and stand-alone oscillating fans will get us through the night at least.

.33" for the day. I'll take it. Forecast says .5" tomorrow. I remain skeptical. Still, it IS crazy humid outside. AND my new A/C is acting up again. Three technician visits in two months? Time to start replacing all the things, and making it work, or what? I dunno what to do at this point. Court? Do lemon laws apply to A/C systems? We did a ton of research for the right system and now we're feeling a little bit jaded. We had such high hopes, but it's turning out to be a complete quagmire. I am spitting mad right now. /rant

FINALLY a direct hit from a passing cell. Can't wait to add another couple of hundredths to the tally. I'm running my soaker hoses at the moment anyway; my tomatoes were struggling.

Supposed TOR passed close to my parent's place down near Lincoln U. TOO close. That cell was trudging straight east out of Quarryville and then turned to the SE with a definite couplet visible on relative velocity. I actually called my mom to make sure they were ok. I would not be surprised if there's storm damage and possibly a track across Rt. 1 near the 896 exit. Guess we'll find out tomorrow, though I'm not seeing anything on CAD (https://www.chesco.org/3963/WebCad-Active-Incidents) so maybe it never touched down at all. Still, scary stuff. Oh, and I'm at .14" for the day. On the third day of previously forecasted, all-day rain and storms. What a joke. Something's wrong--predictability has absolutely gone down the toilet.

WTF is wrong with forecasting these days. As of 9pm last night our local forecast was wall-to-wall rain all day today, and before that, on Friday, it was forecasted to be rainy all weekend. We got a passing shower last night around midnight that dropped a whopping .01". Right now at 8am it's sunny with some clouds, and the nearest rain on radar is in western PA. Forecasting with any accuracy on a day-to-day basis with regular weather (barring large-scale events, like tropical storms) seems to be completely out to lunch. I don't think our current models are calibrated to deal with the current status of our climate. Maybe it's always been this way and I'm just now noticing it, but I don't think so. I've been an avid weather nerd for over a decade and this whole thing just seems off to me somehow. Yeah I may kvetch about individual storm cells missing my back yard on the regular, but it seems to me that day-to-day predictability has gone down the tubes in recent years. I'm genuinely curious if any of our local mets on here have any thoughts regarding this.

Bold statement, for sure. I'm still waiting to see if the climatological fallout from that Hunga Tonga eruption in December 2021 will cause a measurable effect in northern hemispheric weather over the course of the year.

Hope you guys don't mind me lurking here all day from the Philly area forum, but I'm glad you guys made it through (mostly) unscathed. Around 2pm today I took a break from watching the smoke progression in southeastern PA to check the radar and went "holy smokes" because it looked very similar to the 2012 derecho in its initial stages. I mean, that thing was booking it. I then spent the afternoon geeking out over the 2012 event (during which I was actually camping in southern Delaware and had no clue at the time what was going on) while simultaneously absorbing the commentary in this thread. Today was a very interesting weather day to be sure, and it's always nice to have knowledgeable folks contributing to the conversation. The smoke's still pretty bad here, but hopefully it'll let up this weekend. I was kinda hoping for some relief tonight with that rapidly charging MCS but I guess it's one of those "be careful what you wish for" type deals. Cheers and goodnight~

Now THAT was a wild read, thanks Agnes!

This bit from the writeup got me: That was me. I was camping down in slower Delaware that night. It was really wild at the time, but I didn't know anything about it really until I got home the next day.

FWIW, the mets in the midwest forum are saying it'll most likely turn south. Still a very interesting thing to watch develop!

Nevermind. A custom search for "derecho" in June 2012 yielded no results.

3K NAM says it'll be pushed south. I wonder if we can find model runs (on here, perhaps) prior to the 2012 event...

Instantly reminded me of the 2012 derecho: I think it's worth keeping an eye on this one. I didn't realize that one crossed into Indiana ~2pm and hit the east coast only 10 hours later.

I've been so preoccupied with the smoke that I haven't checked the radar in quite a while. That sure is one heck of an MSC/bow echo sweeping east out of the midwest!

True. I just happen to know that Merck site is undergoing environmental remediation for all the toxic crap they produced there. https://www.epa.gov/hwcorrectiveactioncleanups/hazardous-waste-cleanup-merck-sharp-and-dohme-corporation-west-point Even more OT, the A/C guy found out some settings that were wrong from the initial installation in May, as well as a loose wire behind the thermostat, which he was super happy to show to me. I remain skeptical, but at least it's working again. For now. Back OT: our AQI appears to be getting worse:

We gotchu, JTA66: Just hope you don't live downwind from that Merck site. Either that sensor is permanently funky, or there's always some seriously nasty shiz in the air: Both of these sensors are in this snapshot of the AQI fire map:

Not here we're not. We're still in a deficit out here. Smoke is pretty bad this morning. Ugh, here we go again.

Good night for my brand-spanking new heat pump A/C to quit working. AQI is hovering around 100, so opening the windows is risky, but without A/C my house is at 78°F and will take considerable amount of time to cool down as the front of the house (mostly brick) just bakes in the afternoon sun. Called and left a message for them to come out first thing in the morning, but now I'm debating having an emergency service call. Currently 73 outside right now, and I know it's supposed to get down to ~60-ish, so I think we'll be fine; it could be much hotter/humid outside. Still. Not happy--this'll be the second service call in two months for the same issue. Mind you--I'M fine to wait for the morning, but I have people under my roof who are immunocompromised and suffer from asthma/allergies out the wazoo. It has not been a, shall we say, comfortable time for all of us these past few years. As soon as it cools down enough, I'll close all the windows and just run the system on "fan only" so at least we will gain the benefit of filtration.

It peaked here around 11-12 this morning at just over 100 but seems to be on the decline now.