Stormfly

When I saw news of the earthquake I instantly thought of the one in 2011 which was a 5.9 in Mineral VA. We certainly DID feel that one! Today's temblor southeast of Sparta was shallow and while most say the shaking lasted about 15 seconds or so wasn't present here in northern MD. We have vibration sensors that would definitely register anything that I could feel and don't see anything logged around 0807 today. I'm not a fan of something that can literally take out your home with no warning whatsoever. Even though we don't expect these things, 2011 was a perfect example. And just two days later we were tracking Irene which was a high impact event. Unlike the weather which we can prepare for, seismic provides no such warning.

Yes I can! I had an emergency due to severe flooding on July 14, 2000. This was just east of Baltimore. The home's sump pump was overwhelmed (later found out it was due to "monkey balls" from those sycamore trees!) In any case I was standing in ankle deep water in a large pit rigging a gas powered pump (3") to get rid of this water when out of nowhere I started getting pelted with spiky ping pong ball sized hail! Man those hurt! And the wind kicked up and their privacy fence was waving like a flag. Thought that was it. We got like 8" of rain in 45 minutes. TINY cell right over our neighborhood. My adrenaline was pumping almost as hard as that Hale pump!

Picked up another 1.6" in about 30 min here. Roads that normally don't flood are flooded out. EAS signal TWICE for FLOOD WARNING. This is no joke if you're under these cells!

Another 1995 or 2005 with record US landfalls is going to make insurance go through the roof for everyone! Hopefully there won't be another China [sheetrock] syndrome!

Love the whistling wind sound. Especially in overhead cables! Security camera audio is awesome to listen to in evacuated office buildings when storms hit. And the systems are well protected long after the power goes out. And rarely does the cloud go down! I do remember one client whom shall remain nameless, that had a lot of stuff in their datacenter go down in Sandy. Their emergency diesel generators (EDG) were on the penthouse level (roof) so no worries about high water BUT the 20,000 gallon diesel tanks AND pumps were in the basement. When the basement has 7' of water all that fuel is useless and the 300 gallon reserve on the roof didn't last very long. Oops! Fortunately they did have mirror DCs in Texas and San Francisco.

Nice red sky this AM!

.20 in so far. Most exciting thing to happen was a backup feeder (7.2kV) faulted under our parking pad and shot fire out of an expansion joint. Even though it was raining, the grass was on fire and I had to grab a CO2 extinguisher to put it out! Not every day you see pink flames shooting (briefly) out of the ground! The bummer is that side did something to a 400A xfer switch and the main standby genny is offline. So now the power probably WILL go out!

Another bucket of nothing today.

What a great light show last night! And a soaking rain. The video below shows the lightning from the cluster over Cecil Co. and western DE. The red dot in this radarscope screen capture is where the camera is:

Would not be surprised. It's a sultry mess out there right now. Can we just skip to October already?

No SVR but 2.36", nice T&L and some breezes. Interestingly enough, yesterday's was nothing in comparison here, just .11" and two cracks of thunder but more gusty. (31 mph peak today vs. yesterday's 42 mph peak) I was driving through this around 16:45 and passed some serious streams running through the edge of fields. The ground is so dry here that those deluges unfortunately are running off instead of soaking in. The backside had a nice round of lighter rains that did give a decent soaking. 1" hail today not 1/4 mile from here. That's OK, even though 1" isn't too much prefer not to have it. Nothing tops the five minutes of tennis ball stones and 109mph gust on June 15, 1980 for us. That's real severe usually more common in the plains... So far in 2020 this has been the best round of heavier thunderstorms for us.

Ever see that (ridiculous) movie Click? Yeah the one with the remote control! Well this pandemic would be a bona-fide event to use the skip button on!

Radarscope archives for 30 days on Pro tier 2. I got a lightning alert around 0340 and was surprised and saw action well to our south. Caught a few flashes on the tower PTZ, pretty meh TBH. But soaking rain for those under them!

High risk of bust here.

Ugh! This is NOT the weather to be using a clearing saw on the tree line.

All bark, no bite here as usual. I have to wonder where the actual severe weather was as we were in a yellow for nearly an hour. Barely qualifies as a thundershower. Meh

Looking a bit ominous to the west from the tower cam here!

I expect the storms to dissipate within minutes now seeing that yellow circle which we are in the middle of, pop up! Yes, another slight. As in slight push closer to the edge of (fill in the blank!) Seriously though, it looks like it could be a busy evening.

Over the hill! Tomorrow will be three seconds shorter (yes shorter!) than today! The journey has begun.

Little rain here, we're in a hole. Picked up 0.291" in the past 24. Some rumbles and CG strikes within the warn radius. Had to close up and turn on AC due to increased dews. I'd much rather have PC last week with mid 50 dews and breeze. Got some tree line work done without drowning in perspiration! Now it's feeling too tropical for us.

What a strange weather pattern we're in!

Yup, getting hammered here. Like Friday's storm, heavy rain and better lightning. Just hope no more trees get hit. Just got finished up cleaning up the mess. Balsams suck when they get hit although the smell is nice.

First rumble heard inside here. When lightning is detected within 20 miles of the sensor it points the PTZ in the direction and it's active. Seeing nice flashes and can make the outline of the cb cloud nicely.

Ok who reported that? :-D

Yeah what I meant was if I was outside watching that lightning and didn't have access to radarscope, I'd guess it was in Calvert! That PTZ is about 25' off the ground on a tower. I want to get it up higher. It will bounce more in the wind but the view will be worth it. It that point I should clear the trees and see TV hill. Back in the 80s when these trees were either saplings or non existent we could see TV hill tower strobes at night just standing in the driveway. And the video: