September Discobs 2025

[vastateofmind]

Welp, planned to mow the front lawn early-mid afternoon, started getting Rain Alarm alerts almost an hour ago. I scoffed at them...because I sometimes get false-positives from that particular app (e.g., fog, low lying clouds, etc.) plus, it's supposed to be gorgeous this afternoon, and has been all morning and (up until) the past hour:

Get about two passes in on the front lawn...and the sky opens up, heavy downpour, can't hardly see across the street. That started about 40 min ago. Call me a cynic, but I didn't see this reflected above, nor in the morning disco, at least not for close-in NoVA burbs:

These are the kind of whiffs in forecasting that really piss me off. Can I mow tomorrow, or early next week? Yeah, I can likely fit it in with all of the other life crap. But c'mon...can we get at least a bit more of a heads-up in the disco (which is usually what *I* pay attention to)?? Yeah, precip might not happen (and THAT'S usually in hard winter around here)...but this is annoying.

Ironically, we had a small picnic planned for our back patio/yard for midday today but had to cancel last-minute...thank God we did, or it would've been one helluva fire drill.

P.S. -- it's STILL raining almost an hour later.  

[MN Transplant]

23 minutes ago, vastateofmind said:

Welp, planned to mow the front lawn early-mid afternoon, started getting Rain Alarm alerts almost an hour ago. I scoffed at them...because I sometimes get false-positives from that particular app (e.g., fog, low lying clouds, etc.) plus, it's supposed to be gorgeous this afternoon, and has been all morning and (up until) the past hour:

Get about two passes in on the front lawn...and the sky opens up, heavy downpour, can't hardly see across the street. That started about 40 min ago. Call me a cynic, but I didn't see this reflected above, nor in the morning disco, at least not for close-in NoVA burbs:

These are the kind of whiffs in forecasting that really piss me off. Can I mow tomorrow, or early next week? Yeah, I can likely fit it in with all of the other life crap. But c'mon, mets...can we get at least a bit more of a heads-up in the disco (which is usually what *I* pay attention to)?? Yeah, precip might not happen (and THAT'S usually in hard winter around here)...but this is annoying.

Ironically, we had a small picnic planned for our back patio/yard for midday today but had to cancel last-minute...thank God we did, or it would've been one helluva fire drill.

P.S. -- it's STILL raining almost an hour later.  

It does say "a few showers making it as far east as Southern MD".  90% of the area is dry.  They probably should have put a 20% POP in, though..

[vastateofmind]

19 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

It does say "a few showers making it as far east as Southern MD".  90% of the area is dry.  They probably should have put a 20% POP in, though..

To your point, LWX has suddenly and retroactively changed their tune (though not necessarily in the PM disco update):

I appreciate your observation...and honestly, your personal inputs here over the years. And please believe, I defend your profession more than you know....I only approach this from a hobbyist standpoint, but twice already this afternoon, I've had two neighbors ping me -- "yo, man...IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO RAIN THIS AFTERNOON, WTF??"    I got nuthin.   

Who knows...maybe we may have a microclimate thing going on here? This is anecdotal, but I'd say we've had exactly this kind of "blow-up" very localized shower/storm over the Hayfield/Kingstowne/Franconia area several times over the past two years, where almost no other locales in the close-in-NoVA burbs had nothing. And it's like it blows up...and rains/storms like hell...and then dissipates very quickly. That happened this afternoon, and at least a few times over the past two years.

I (along with a couple neighbors) were astounded when the sky opened up about two hours ago. It didn't even LOOK that showery/stormy if you looked to the west/NW (unless you looked at radar) but boy-howdy...did we get a good gully-washer for about an hour.