CoolHandMike

LIES AND PREVARICATIONS

Currently 93 with a DP of 66. Warm but not super unpleasant.

A/C guys did their thing and supposedly found a blockage in one of the return vents that was restricting the amount of air to the unit, so it wasn't flowing as fast as it should have been, and thusly was never triggering the second stage of our cooling cycle... at least that's as far as I understand it. I don't know why it was perfectly capable of handling multiple >90°F days in June, but ok... All I know is, I was measuring the air coming out of my home office vent at around 62 (when it was sorta working before) and now it's been a constant 57-58. The house does feel cooler but the thermostat in the living room (set to 70) still reads 72, some 6 hours after they left. I think I can be ok with that on a 93°F day, so long as it's consistent and doesn't start slowly creeping up again. Time will tell. Incidentally, it's set so low because the thermostat is located in one of the coolest rooms of the house. With that set to 70, the warmest room in the house (my wife's office) should keep at around 72-73. We have a split-level with a weird layout, so that's what we've deemed as being acceptable.

I yet remain skeptical to the point where I'm about to deploy some RasPi's with thermocouples to start data-logging. I told that last part to my wife yesterday, and she about died laughing. I was all, "what. You knew who you were marrying. Sheesh." 

36 minutes ago, Newman said:

Made it to around 92 here in Fleetwood. Some slow moving pop up storms forming over the coastal plain and Philly. Weak steering flow, humid/moist atmosphere, and convective T reached means you get these typical summer time pop ups. Not widespread in nature today

 

On another note, I will finally be moving to Wyoming in less than 3 weeks to continue my education and get my PhD. It's been a pleasure to be apart of the Philly subforum here, I don't think I'll be back east any time soon! But I'll still be posting here occasionally, can't escape your home roots

Congrats! I did some field study in WY a while back and fell in love with the place. So much naked geology.

4 hours ago, Albedoman said:

do you have a a heat pump system?  If so , it sounds like the defrost board or the reversing valve maybe screwed up. The other issue in this high humidity is that the compressor maybe screwed up too if they never charged the unit with enough coolant when they installed it.  Low coolant pressure can give you the appearance that the unit is working as the more you turn down the thermostat, the warmer it gets in the house as the air never really cools. 

Yes. So lighting a fire has yielded the result I wanted. They have a crew coming out at 10, with Bosch tech support on standby in case they need to make a "site visit" for some reason. It's going to be hot today, so we'll see if they can resolve it before then. Fingers crossed.

4 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

In under 2.5hrs we'll be under 80 days, I'll probably still be up.

The start of Eagles camp is the next hurdle to feel Fall is right around the corner. Then back to school sales commercials then Labor day...then Birds first reg season game then Halloween stuff is rolled out way early then Fall 9/23.

73F/DP 71F

 

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.

8 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

That sucks. They either have incompetent techs or the A/C is fvcked up. Do you have a window unit in the meantime? Even a 5000BTU for a small room would help. 

Received squat for rain today...

76F/DP 73F

 

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

7 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

It's gotta be under some sort of warranty if just purchased. Tell them you're sick of their service men not finding a solution and you want a new one. I'd be pissed. I rather have my heater break during winter than A/C during summer and it's not even close...

76F/DP 72F

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.

8 hours ago, Albedoman said:

I am going to emphatically state tonight and please mark this post. The Canadian wild fires have emitted so much smoke now in the northern hemisphere that this winter in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will exhibit record cold snaps and perhaps above average snowfall for some areas. The dominating HP over southern Canada which is preventing the Bermuda High from taking over this summer will relax every now and then during the summer  but will continue its dominance over our weather patterns until the pattern reloads with el nino pattern becoming dominate. in mid to late winter.

 

Below average monthly temps will continue into the foreseeable future. As the el nino returns with an easterly pattern, nor'easters will become the talk of the town in December. This year reminds me a lot of 2002 winter season coming off a major a drought into an developing el nino pattern. we had some good nor'easters that year.  The smoke will help keep temp down.

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~

37 minutes ago, Hurricane Agnes said:

There is some discussion of it back in 2012 before it got near here, right in this forum , starting around here -

 

Now THAT was a wild read, thanks Agnes!

11 minutes ago, Hurricane Agnes said:

When I was looking for the actual number of miles that defined one, I had found the article about what you are talking about - https://wchstv.com/news/local/thursday-marks-11th-anniversary-of-2012-derecho

ETA - NWS write up on it - https://www.weather.gov/lwx/20120629svrwx

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!

2 minutes ago, CoolHandMike said:

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

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!

4 minutes ago, Birds~69 said:

Merck isn't the only pharmaceutical Company around here, Colorcon is right down the road and I think there's another. Surprised I haven't met someone with 3 eyes and 1 ear... 

 

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: