CoolHandMike

It's still 94°F at 6pm. I want to grill some steaks but maybe if I just leave them on a pan on the back deck they'll cook themselves.

54 minutes ago, KamuSnow said:

Is your rain barrel near your sump? Where does the overflow go (from the barrel)? Probably not an issue, but just to rule it out. Or maybe your soaker hoses are really putting out, lol.

 

Good question. The rain barrels have a bypass that diverts runoff into the existing drain that runs to the curb/storm drain, so overflow isn't a concern. I do remain slightly concerned about the soaker hoses though, which is why we're reducing them to half-hour run times instead of a full hour. That said, we've barely run them and the water table is still just really high.

Ok, so, we were all under some pretty ambitious storm warnings this evening, but it's looking increasingly unlikely anything's going to fire off tonight in our region. This weather is nuts. Seems like we won't have enough instability to puncture the cap despite temps in the mid 80's and dewpoints in the mid 70's. PWATs have got to be through the roof.

I will say that my perception of storm potential has changed significantly since our basement nearly flooded two weeks ago. I still have standing water in my dry sump well, something which we've never had in the nearly three years we've lived here. Before we received over 11" of rain in three days, I was all about the storms, but now... I'm actually less inclined to pine for, nor lament the scarcity of heavy rain. Classic case of being careful what you wish for, I guess.

43 minutes ago, RedSky said:

Aleet Alert! Emergency declared for PA regional power grid on the verge of failure

 

Where? Link to an article?

1 hour ago, Birds~69 said:

These will be 90+ but in return we have chances of T-storms tomorrow and Sat. Not a bad deal and the 90s are short lived.

I'm a stickler for replacing batteries (or recharging) before they screw you (and they will) especially the FOB for the car...

79F/DP 66F

 

Ooh I'm in the same boat. My PWS has been going strong on the original set of batts since late 2020. I really need to get up there and swap them out some time soon.

On topic, I once again find myself working outside in the heat and humidity of summer. Today wasn't too bad, but I'm not especially looking forward to tomorrow and Friday. At least we have a 10 sq ft pop-up canopy to provide shade on the site, but it's not going to be pleasant. Thankfully, no tyvek this time around at least.

22 minutes ago, JTA66 said:

Finished with about .90” for the day, 71F/DP 69F.

On a side note, Lowes has some Halloween decorations out already.

Drove through, and had to stop during, that absolute deluge in Exton this afternoon. Just could not see, driving 5 mph with the washers on "frenetic". There was no way in heck I was getting on the turnpike in that.

Side note, I've noticed many of the beer stores did not completely sell out of pumpkin-themed beers last year and have been trying to sell them on discount ever since. I wonder if the "pumpkin-spice ALL THE THINGS" trend may be drawing down finally, in the beer world at least.

Or maybe they already stocked it this year in late May and I already missed it.

14 hours ago, zenmsav6810 said:

Thats evaportranspiration for you! What part of reading are you in ? Is the soil sandy? 

I wish I had sandy soil. Nope, all clay. Muhlenberg, NW side. Weird thing that I haven't noticed before--we have soaker hoses for our gardens. One runs along the back of the house to water the mulched flowers and shrubs close to the house, One for the tomatoes and beans somewhat close to the house, one for the shrubs/trees planted along the back fence, and one for the squash garden on the far side of the house. I ran the hoses for the two closest to the house last night for an hour each. This morning, my sump pump began cycling on/off in ~10 second increments. The water was filling up that fast, and it hasn't rained in a bit. This happened for about a half hour before it stabilized. (Side note: pretty worrisome as I only noticed it while trying to leave for work at 5am. Ended up being late.)

Granted, we've only had a working, float-switch operated sump since our flooding event two weeks ago, but I can't believe this is normal; we've been watering our gardens like this for a couple of years but the sump well has been consistently dry until two weekends ago when we got over 11" in three days. It's had at least a couple of inches of standing water in it since. I can't help but think that event somehow altered the groundwater flow in my neighborhood.

Long story short, the next time we water, we'll cut it back to 1/2 hour per line and then closely monitor the ensuing results, if any, in our sump. 

I'll be working outside in the heat all week again in NJ, but at least this time it won't be in Newark. Apologies to anyone who has to live there (or between there and Jersey City), but I'm sure glad I don't.

Hot day here today, peaked at 92 and change, but once the back deck was in shade, it was actually pretty pleasant to do some grilling. What I'm kind of amazed at is how I still need to water my garden when there's still a couple of inches of water in the bottom of my basement dry well. Sheesh.

3 hours ago, Hurricane Agnes said:

Miracle of miracles but the dp had actually dropped below 60 (so far as low as 58).  I made it up to 84 for a high.

Saw that Don became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season with the latest update, all while it is getting closer to being extra-tropical.

In any case, it's currently partly sunny and 82 with dp bopping between 59 and 60.

Pretty much the same over here. It's supposed to get down to 62 tonight, should make for some good sleeping weather with the windows open. If my neighbor's pool party ever winds down, that is. I'm gonna give em' until midnight to simmer down, then I start becoming "grumpy old man".

Got .86". Not bad.

3 minutes ago, RedSky said:

As good as radar looks the lightning detector is dead

I can assure you it is very much snap, crackling and popping out there. Already at almost a half an inch to boot.

3 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

Should be getting hit now if not already...

Can confirm:

I don't know why I'm still up, but it's starting to get rowdy out.

The line progresses...

That is one angry-looking line of storms. I wonder if it'll make it to us.

After off and on clouds today, it turned sunny and our temp is steadily increasing. At 6pm. WTF. Impossible to do anything outside without turning into a swamp monster. Or even in my garage. Can we get that countdown to fall posted again please?

Just got a quick third of an inch. I was trapped in the car in the driveway with my groceries, really needing to use the bathroom. (The garage is full of projects in various stages. Dangit.) Thankfully it let up after a few minutes, but damn. I'll have to periodically check the sump to see if any of that percolates down to the water table.

I really want to get some kind of remote sensor so I can data-log how it does over time. It's a part of my house that seemed like a harmless unknown, until it very much wasn't. Maybe I'll see if I can rig something up with a RasPi Zero or something...

Oops, posted this in the MA sub by mistake.

I haven't posted all week since I've been travelling for work and not doing much else besides sleeping and eating. So here's a recap of my PWS:

It's HOT. And it was nearly the same in Newark, NJ all week. I've worked in hotter weather, under worse conditions, but this week was a doozy. I am beat.

But hey, at least our boil water advisory was lifted earlier today, so that's nice. There IS still 5" of water at the bottom of my dry sump well though, so that's a bit disconcerting. The new pump works though, and is temporarily installed with a hose running up to the washer drain in the garage. I plan to plumb it in all nice-like this weekend.

I haven't posted all week since I've been travelling for work and not doing much else besides sleeping and eating. So here's a recap of my PWS:

It's HOT. And it was nearly the same in Newark, NJ all week. I've worked in hotter weather, under worse conditions, but this week was a doozy. I am beat.

But hey, at least our boil water advisory was lifted earlier today, so that's nice. There IS still 5" of water at the bottom of my dry sump well though, so that's a bit disconcerting. The new pump works though, and is temporarily installed with a hose running up to the washer drain in the garage. I plan to plumb it in all nice-like this weekend.

Edit: oops, meant to post this in the Philly area sub. My bad.

Water main break near me, but at least the basement stopped filling up in the wee hours of the morning. The water authority is apparently having a hard time finding the break. We were able to fill several buckets with our basement water so we'll be able to flush, and we also have two 50g rain barrels when that runs out. Only saw a couple of large trees down while I was out and about this morning... We got super lucky there wasn't a lot of wind over here.

58 minutes ago, Kevin Reilly said:

Hmmm looking at the water vapor map looks like we have an early look at the Polar Vortex over Hudson Bay.  Guess it is just a matter of time until the smoke from the fires in Western Quebec comes back down?  Are those fires still burning up there?

I'd say they haven't stopped burning.

Water main break here north of Reading, unless it's just us with no pressure

I did some quick, back-of-the-envelope calculations and my little basement sump well seems to be recharging at a rate of 2.5 gallons per minute. That is QUITE the recharge rate. I'll check it again in a couple of hours to see how/if the rate decreases.

We got VERY lucky in that the house came with a sump pump, but since it was in the shed, I believe it was only used for the above-ground pool that used to be here many years before we moved in. It's only 1/6hp, but it's doing the business, just, removing ~3gpm. I have a 1/2hp pump on the way.

1 minute ago, LVLion77 said:

Winding down now at 2.27” for the day with a tenth of an inch or less left based on radar. I am wondering if this was enough to remove the moderate drought criteria here over lehigh county. Much of Berks likely improved enough to erase drought or dryness criteria!

I should hope so! I'm seeing reports from people's PWSs of anywhere from 4.5 to 8.5" in my local area. My 24" deep sump dry well has only drained to 16" of water in ~2 hours. Unfortunately, it does not have a flow switch so I will be monitoring it throughout the night. Luckily, I already had a pre-configured Raspberry Pi camera sitting in a drawer so it's currently employed to look at the sump well.

Even though we flooded a little bit, we got extremely lucky. Who knows how many feet of water could have infilled had we not been proactive. My new sump pump will have a float switch for added peace of mind.

It's still drizzling a little but I can see the back edge of it now.

P.s.: Does anyone here remember a couple of days ago in this thread when I said this weekend's rainy forecast was all lies and prevarications? Turns out I was right. But in the complete opposite way I wanted to be. This was then:

THIS is what actually happened:

I can't believe how many GPM I'm pumping from my basement. I don't want to pull the sump out to see if it's marked with a flow rate, but the water table must be at the ground surface right now. I think I might see if I can get another pump tomorrow for backup. Hope they don't all get sold out. Actually, I think I'll go snag one from Amazon for next-day delivery instead.