RDM

Oh my. I have the same Ortovox - someplace - with the strength meter option. It's a must for backcountry. Same for the shovels. Mine were relegated to vehicle duty long ago too. As they say, you measure how much your friends like YOU by the size of THEIR shovels. Used Ramer ski poles with self-arrest grips that can be converted into probe poles. Fortunately never had to use them for probing, but the self arrest feature saved me a couple times. One of the many things I like about the Alps is you don't have to worry about some curmudgeon ski patrol threatening to punch your ticket for skiing off-piste. You can ski just about anyplace you want other than a few off limits forests that are safe zones for avalanche protection. Lots of off-piste options from hut to hut etc. That said, if you get hurt off piste in Europe it is extremely expensive to be rescued. So ski insurance is a good thing. Lots of good memories.

Your reference to back-country caught my eye. What gear did you use for back-country? Do/did you tele-mark or use randonnee gear, or some other setup. I learned to ski on the bumps in Ohio (a whopping 350 feet of vertical), but really got my legs in the Alps during my first tour in Germany in the late 80's. Saved no money but skied my arsh off. Converted to telemark gear in 90 and have never been back on alpine gear since. Lots more tele skiing in the Alps my second tour in Germany in the early/mid 2000's, plus a fair bit of tele skiing in Japan w/backcountry in the most amazing snow I've ever encountered (and they get a LOT of it). Last place I skied in Japan was a decent of Mt. Fuji on tele skis - a memorable experience on an incredible day with unlimited visibility. Haven't skied for 10 plus years, so the tele experience now would be ugly at best now. Only skied Squall Valley out west. As a former Olympic venue I had much higher expectations - it was a big letdown. Good snow quality, but very disappointing terrain. Have heard Jackson is one of the best out west. However, for a relative comparison you can ski more than 2x the vertical of Jackson in Zermatt, Switzerland (over 8500 feet of vertical in one run). If you've never had a chance to ski the Alps, it is highly recommended. Pick the right times to go off season though to avoid the lines. If you go during ski break in the springtime the congestion can be crazy. In general, much more vertical in the Alps than about anyplace out west, but better snow out west.

ROTFLMAO!!! Hysterical. And I thought this was a weather forum. It's actually a comedy site in disguise, albeit a thin disguise at best. You nailed it CAPE!

The game... hum... Let's see - I think I'm busy this afternoon. I've got to... nope, did that already. Maybe I can... naw, that's even more boring than watching the Skins. Hard to imagine what the atmosphere is like in the Skins front office these days. Tickets as low as $4 at the last home game? Hard to contemplate given the futile impossibility of even finding tickets not long ago. Wonder what the stats are for season ticket holders? At one time one of the most prized commodities in sports. Since the value of the Skins as a franchise is still up there, maybe Dan S. will give thought to cashing out and do everyone a favor by doing so. We can only hope.

Well shucks... I sure hope it ain't over with yet. But thank you. Been fortunate to have some interesting experiences and witness some of the most stark examples of weather Mother Nature can muster. I hope this coming winter brings us all a spectacle to remember. We are definitely due!

Mappy, You are assuming everyone here can read... Now, think about that... (please read on if you dare) The analogy is like the flight safety card in the seat back of the Pakistani Airlines flight I took way back in the 90's (I was sitting in an emergency exit aisle). The card said, "If you can't read this card please notify a cabin attendant". (again, think about that - I'm not making this up) Thinking to myself, if you can't read, how the h*ll will you know to notify a cabin attendant? It said the same thing in about 6 languages - I speak German, and the translated message said the same thing in German. So they really went out of their way to get it wrong in multiple languages. (and mind you, Pakistan and India both had nuclear weapons then and now - and I lived in India at the time). Unable to avoid the temptation, I pushed the overhead light for the cabin attendant. She came to see what was wrong. I asked if the card was a joke and she asked why? I explained the situation and she looked at me perplexed and asked if I wanted to move to a non-emergency aisle seat. I laughed said no and asked her to get the purser. The purser came and I asked the same thing about the card. At first she gave me the same perplexed look as the first attendant. Then all of a sudden, it hit her, as if the load of the entire PIA organization was on her shoulders. She got so embarrassed her eyes welled up. She sheepishly said thank you and that she would bring this unfortunate oversight to the attention of her superiors. The purser went back up to the front of the cabin and had a conference with the rest of the attendants and the captain. Pretty soon they were all laughing with a muted chuckle in an ill-fated attempt to downplay the hilarity of the moment. Everyone else on the flight was wondering what was going on except them and me. Wonder if they ever did reprint the safety cards? Which brings us back to the quandary here... If only everyone here could read...

No kidding on the STJ. Several of those members show it ripping from way off Baja. No lack of moisture in many of those setups.

Night and day difference from the Cooke era. Cooke epitomized the term, "take care of your people and they will take care of you". Was not too long ago when season tickets for the Redskins was THE thing to have. Snyder paid $800M for the Skins and Forbes says it's currently worth $3.4B, but that seems high based on all the empty seats. Too bad the NFL doesn't have some sort of 2/3rds vote option to force an owner to abdicate. In the big picture, the current Skins administration is hurting not only the Skins, but the league.

It's difficult to watch just about any NBA game anymore. The "it's all about me syndrome" is nauseating. On half the plays the player's reaction would make you think they just made the greatest play in the history of sports. Defense is nearly nonexistent in many games until the post-season. The pecking order of who gets by with violating the fundamentals is atrocious - seeing LJ take 6 or 7 steps and not get called for traveling, the obvious carry on many cross-overs, the "Euro Step" - it's so sad to what the game has become compared to what it was in the 80's and early 90's. Then there's the subculture of stats, bonuses, ball time etc constantly lurking in the dark shadows. It's muted the fun factor of fundamental athletic competition. It's no wonder attendance and tv ratings have plummeted. If they really played a full game flat out and as a team on both ends of the court, it may be worth watching again.

Got down to 22, where we're still at with 21 dp. The air mass dried out even more overnight.

Hi George - Thanks for the reminder. I did some poking around in my archives of VHS-C tapes and couldn't find it. Then got side tracked. That was the summer trip to Hintertux, Austria in 89 or 90. What an event - short lived, but so intense! Still remember the very unsettling feeling of having total vertigo and not realizing I was falling over until my head hit the slope. You hear people talk of getting vertigo and think, yea - uh huh - not me, or I used to think so. That experienced helped me understand the actuality of vertigo and my own mortality. Don't recall if I mentioned before I was a avid tele-mark skier back then. Did a lot of back-country in the Alps, with skins, beacons etc and encountered some pretty intense snowfalls. But nothing anywhere ever came close to that squall. Even the intense snowfalls on the windward side of the Japanese Alps did not compare in intensity - and they get a ton of snow there. Search on Yahoo for "Zao Snow Monsters" - the pictures that show up are the wind swept snow encrusted tops of pine trees - they get that much snow and it's excellent quality. I'll renew my search for the squall video and see if I can find it. Once I do, I still need to finagle a way to get it converted from analog VHS-C to digital. Thanks again for the memory jog.

Down to 30 with a 23 dp. Looks like 25 or so is within reach.

007, Regret I can't claim that quote, but I sure do agree with it. Retired from 30 years of federal service 4 years ago. Spent nearly half my career overseas in 5 different countries having the good fortune to experience some of the most dramatic forms of weather mother nature can muster. Can't believe how fast the 30 year year career went, let alone the last 4. I do have a philosophy about time.... When we are 10 years old, a year is 10% of our life (at 10, we could solve every problem imaginable in an hour), at 20,,, a year is 5%,,, at 50, a year is 2% etc. The older we get, the less each year means in the big picture. Thus, I can't even believe we're just a few weeks from Thanksgiving and Home Depot has Christmas decorations out already. Where does the time go?

Yeaaaa, I know.... no mercy here on this board whatsoever. Haha. Think about the only one older than me is usedtobe. Gosh darn young whippersnappers are infiltrating everything. Now, where is my Geritol?

Great pic PSU. I'm guessing that really ruined someone's day. Myself, couldn't help but laughing out loud when I saw it. Can just hear the insurance adjuster now. "You have a what? A broken hot dog bun?" How would they ever process the claim without cracking up? And what about the person the hot dog ran into??? How would THEY explain it? You got hit by a what??? As for all these comments about getting old at "20". Givemeabreak.... I'll be 58 in a month. Can't even remember what it was like when I was 20, other than the vivid memory of the blizzard of 78 in Ohio when I was 17.

Remember that snow very well. Was in downtown DC when it hit taking some training for work. Rode into work that morning with a friend from Woodbridge who had an Isuzu Tooper. We put our snow skiing gear and my logging chain in his Trooper that morning before heading to work (sheer luck on throwing in the chain - that part comes later). It started snowing between 9 and 10 and by 11 the government decided to closed at noon. The chaos gripped the area very rapidly as it was a heavy wet snow that was very slick. Remember the big flakes that never let up. Instead of heading straight home, we helped a couple cars get out of the hilly parking lot at the compound on the Naval Observatory grounds across from the main State Dept Building on 23rd street. That delay cost us big time... Heard the reports about 395 being a parking lot, so we headed down the Mt Vernon Pkwy through Old Town. Found out later on the news there were over 1600 car abandoned around the roads just in the vicinity of the Pentagon - the news that night showed women in heels and men in wingtips trying to walk down Shirley Hwy. With all the abandoned cars the plows could not do their thing, although the plows were very late to the game anyway. That storm is one of the reasons why VDOT, MDOT and DCDOT send out the plows early now with the slightest hint of anything. It was slow heading South on the Pkwy through Old Town, but moving until we approached Mt Vernon. A couple of BIG pines had fallen across the Pkwy completely blocking both directions of travel. We put on our gear and commandeered people to pile inside, on top of, and hanging off the doors of his Trooper. They were literally hanging on the 4 open doors and sitting on the roof and hood to maximize the body count. At one point we had over 15 people on the trooper and the extra weight did it. We were able to use the logging chain to pull near the top of the trees and slide them around enough to open up one lane of travel in both directions. People where hooting and hollering and honking horns like crazy when we got the Pkwy open. Clearing the pkwy was alone an amazing experience I'll never forget, let alone the rest of the day's experience. Went through Ft. Belvoir only to sit in traffic stalled on Rt 1 southbound. Got turned around, went through Ft. Belvoir again and took Backlick Road over to I-95 and headed south. 95 south was crawling, but at least moving. Got to the bridge overpass where Pohick Road crossed 95 and my friend let me out - while still driving on 95. Yea, I know, pedestrians are not allowed on the interstate byways - at that point nobody gave a F... I climbed up the embankment, over a fence and walked the last 2 miles home on Pohick. As I crossed walked across the Pohick road bridge I looked back down on I-95, and there were half a dozen people following my tracks up the embankment from 95 to Pohick road. Guess they picked up on the idea. I had on my warm Gortex ski jacket and snowmobile boots - they had on dresses, suits and business attire. It was a pretty dire situation for many. From the time we departed the compound on 23rd street until I arrived home that evening was over 6 hours. That storm caught everyone by surprise including all of the big 3 network forecasters in the DC TV market. None of them called for anything more than flurries. The Weather Channel that morning said we could get a few inches, which is what prompted my friend and I to throw our gear in the Trooper that morning. The Weather Channel was VERY difference in the 80's and in a good way - you could actually stand to watch it back then. Never forget that event. Brought the DC Metro area to its knees...

Got down to 28 here, just outside the Tysons UHI - with 99% rh. Already up to 29 now. Thick frost on everything out in the open. No frost near or under any of the trees, even those with no leaves. Interesting how stark the contrast is between frost and no frost.

A little white mixing in with the rain here NW of Vienna. Can't really call it white rain yet. 35/34. Need to rates to have any hope.

41/31 - dp was up to 32 a few mins ago. If the dp was lower that would certainly help. Saw a post earlier from a Pro Met about the sounding at IAD with the drier layer aloft. Hope that bodes well for at least some white rain here in NOVA. As is, don't see us getting much of anything IVO of MBY. You folks up on Parr's Ridge and NW of MOCO should be setting good. Looks to be some decent rates later on today...

rotflmao - hilarious!

Same principle applied to citrus growers in FL when they spray water on their produce during freezing threats. The water helps protect the citrus from freezing. Very counterintuitive.

Temp just rose to 29/28dp. Was at 28 since the start at 05:15. Sleet only atm - hoping that inbound band does the needy...

Radar hole down around Hburg not filling in. Really lightening up here in Vienna - pixie dust temps have not budged any since starting at 05:15. Now 28/27dp. About 3" otg atm

32/18 - down to freezing w/o the dp rising a tick...

33/18 - Just came back from getting "food" for my Kubota (see avatar). The atmosphere has that special feeling outside... Slight breeze from the NNE and variable.