June Discobs 2026

[WxUSAF]

10 hours ago, Paleocene said:

https://streamable.com/010pjd

 

Backyard fireflies peaking in silver spring. This is after three years of curating their habitat with a couple hundred square feet of "meadow" and dumping leaf litter in a few areas. Everyone should do it!

Can you take some pics of the meadow area? What did you plant there? You converted turf grass to that ?

[Eskimo Joe]

10 hours ago, Paleocene said:

https://streamable.com/010pjd

 

Backyard fireflies peaking in silver spring. This is after three years of curating their habitat with a couple hundred square feet of "meadow" and dumping leaf litter in a few areas. Everyone should do it!

 

13 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Can you take some pics of the meadow area? What did you plant there? You converted turf grass to that ?

Yes more details on this please so I can replicate!

[yoda]

33 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

Not sold on widespread 100s. It's several days out, some models like the Euro have a known mid range heat bias, and it's rare to get an airmass that supports many 100+ degree air temperatures readings. We probably won't know until next Tuesday if we're going to have a legit heat wave on our hands, or if this is just going to be a few hot days. 

Quite possible yes, but 06z GFS is also quite toasty for Wednesday into Saturday - using 18z 2mT at DCA:

99/101/102/97

I see what you mean on the 00z Euro... that is a big no thanks from me re 2mT.  Mid 100s?  Blech

[Paleocene]

5 minutes ago, Eskimo Joe said:

 

Yes more details on this please so I can replicate!

 

19 minutes ago, WxUSAF said:

Can you take some pics of the meadow area? What did you plant there? You converted turf grass to that ?

It doesn't look great this year because MBY has been relatively dry. Ignore my sad garden lol.

Basic story: we bought the house in 2022, very close to the Silver Spring metro in one of the nearby single family neighborhoods. It's on a roughly 50' x 200' lot, so it's a very deep narrow backyard behind the house. It was owned by an older gent who lived alone, and did the absolute bare minimum. I'm talking mow the lawn and that's it - he let a few azaleas grow, but didn't plant anything. Rhododendrons in the back quarter of the yard were overrun by wild grape and other vines. There was a mix of turf grass, weeds, and vines back there. But a lot of it was just urban/suburban weedy unkempt mess. 

In the summer of 2023 I noticed we had a decent number of fireflies. Less than what I shared in that video above, but enough to notice and appreciate. So I looked into a bit and decided to just let the back quarter of the yard be "wild" - I don't cut the grass, and I use a weedwacker on the more annoying vines that are trying to climb shrubs and trees I'm planting. The grass is scrubby this year because of a lack of rain - in previous years it was more of a rolling field of grain type look.

My brother lives in upstate NY on 16 acres of former farm field which is now a meadow slowly returning to forest. He has an absolutely insane number of fireflies that put on a show like in my video, but scaled up by 50x. So I'm trying to replicate that in miniature. I've added a few native trees (swamp white oak, tulip poplars that grow from seedlings and are now 10+ feet tall just in a few years, red maple, red and white oak); and reclaimed the rhododendrons. I think the other important thing I do is drop a bunch of leaf litter back there. Instead of putting it all on the curb in November, I go back there and dump 4-5x trash cans worth of birch, poplar, oak, etc leaves all over the place.  

I'm a bit worried that the "meadow" is this year losing a battle to wild grape, morning glory, virginia creeper, and even some english ivy that is just everywhere around here. I may have to eventually rent some sort of turf grinder/soil churner type device and replant wildflowers and native grasses.   However, 2026 is definitely the best firefly year of the past 4.  

Sorry for the digression! Back to weather. It's nice out because it's cloudy.

[yoda]

Even 06z Euro has low 100s for most of the region on Wednesday 

 

[Eskimo Joe]

4 minutes ago, yoda said:

Quite possible yes, but 06z GFS is also quite toasty for Wednesday into Saturday - using 18z 2mT at DCA:

99/101/102/97

I see what you mean on the 00z Euro... that is a big no thanks from me re 2mT.  Mid 100s?  Blech

Honestly, I wouldn't mind a few days near 100°. Even though I work outside it's nice to feel the heat for a few days. It lets you know you're alive, and this airmass seems to be more NW flow than some soupy tropical cluster. Those days are miserable.