87storms

this is a truly impressive amount of rain here. i have no doubt that some of the nearby gauges in bethesda will read 2"+ by tomorrow. i could see rising cloud tops this afternoon which made me think this could be the start of a line of storms, but didn't expect them to produce like this. not much wind, but there has been some lightning/thunder.

hail here

absolute torrential downpour. there will be some severe reports from this line. i'm on the southern edge, but still getting my money's worth.

cloud to ground lightning here. most energetic storm of the season in that regard.

i don't know if it would classify as severe but got a pretty decent downburst, torrential rain (won't be surprised to see up to an inch here) and impressive lightning.

strong storm moving through bethesda. this one is packing some vitamins.

it's shaping up to be a stormy evening. nice sample just moved through...initial gusts, some torrents, and a fair amount of T&L.

the sky had a very south florida look to it today with all the cumulus clouds around. water vapor/satellite/radar all look decent. would have liked to see things pop earlier, but hopefully some of these cells hold together to clear out some of this pollen.

it's fascinating to me how many people are so desperate to refute man made climate change and its impacts. i have an idea...why don't we just pretend it exists just to be on the safe side?

there appears to be more blocking in canada for that storm as opposed to this upcoming weekend where the system is just cutting through the path of least resistance into the midwest. timing will be key again. may even want that next system to slow down a notch.

Didn’t want to say it, but I thought h5 looked awful even during the thump scenario. May just need some time for the pattern to shake out.

It's the dumbest title ever..probably why you missed it lol, took me a minute to realize it was a storm thread and not a discussion about how bad the pattern is. as far as patterns are concerned, call me one of those who didn't see this coming after what was a pretty chilly start to the season. this is without a doubt as weak of a winter as last year so far (actually weaker because the mid january storm was great). on a side note, i enjoy the outdoors, so if it doesn't snow i'm ok with some hiking/biking weather.

i think checking the models for digital snow beyond 5 days is still pretty much a time passer without much to show for it, but the oscillations are worth monitoring and +AO/-PNA isn't going to help things. we just need to hope that we enter our wheelhouse of snow (i think it's early jan thru feb) with the indices in our favor, otherwise we're relying even more on luck than normal. as far as dec/march is concerned, i can't imagine global warming is going to help us in that regard considering we're already a fringe snowtown to begin with, though i certainly can see the storms being more robust moving forward, so there's that.

we had such a long run of wet/mild and even hot over the summer that i'm actually impressed we were able to switch so quickly in the fall to a pattern that could even remotely support snow. that said, i feel like we're only at normal/typical now and may need another favorable pattern nudge to get into a wintry pattern. nov/dec were pretty weak in the snow department, but they normally are, so i don't think we've wasted much during that transition period from a record breaking summer to a pattern that could support snow given the right track.

1996 was the mid atlantic mother ship event, but 2016 was the best snowstorm from start to finish. i stayed in the light snow during the lull so that helped. it's probably my #1 storm now, simply because there was little if any sleet. just a good ole fashioned blizzard. 96 and 03 round out my top 3 with feb '10 a close 4th. i do flip flop on these rankings, so ask me in a year and these might be shuffled primarily because they were all great in their own way.

i have fam in va beach so i'm rooting for you all. we got another car topper here. sandbridge is a great little beach...would be cool to be there during a snowstorm.

the eclipse was kinda cool even in md. i ended up making a cereal box projector lol. kinda lame, but it did work. i ended up taking the afternoon off from work and went biking and noticed a definitive dimness during the peak time which lasted a couple minutes.

compared to last year i feel like this summer has been very tame. definitely worse out west it seems. i could be wrong, but i don't think we've hit 100 yet and not too many upper 90s days.

woof

The lack of snow on the trees etc is actually a good point. Feb 10 definitely looked snowier above the ground (trees, power lines, etc) because it was a wetter snow. That could make me rethink the discussion a little bit. Guess that's the price you pay for powder.

one interesting thing is that all the big storms have all had their own style. it goes to show there is more than 1 way for us to get a big snow, which is a good thing. it'll be interesting to see how the next big one plays out.

Nah I was kinda fringed and I think that was made more epic because it was snowing on top of snowmageddon. Looking at them individually I gotta put that one below 00.

I'd probably have to go with 16 now. I never stopped snowing Saturday. Stayed close enough to the deform band here that it was probably a little more than snow tv. The front end thump overnight Friday and the Saturday afternoon wraparound deform bands put it at or very near the top of its class here. 96 and 16 are the cream of the crop for snowstorms here at least N&W of the cities and pretty close to that for the cities themselves. Feb 03 was also special but a notch below in entertainment value. Feb 10 was bigtime but didn't have the temps to start out that 16 did. 16 96 03 10 09 93 00 That's probably the order for me. Too young for 83.

The broadness of that upper low and the fact that it went under us seems like it allowed us to tap into the gulf and Atlantic and stay on the cold side throughout which is not easy to do here. This was a hecs thru and thru. Looking at the energy as it entered the west coast it didn't look all the special but it had all the right ingredients feeding it I guess.

Lol. 2016 comeback victory