RDM

16/0 here NW of Vienna. Pretty nippy outside. Going to be interesting tomorrow.

Some odd temps in there. How is IAD warmer with 34F than DC/PGCo at 32?

Looks great! Reminds me of a skin resort in Japan on Honshu (the big island) called Zao. Zao is famous for its "snow monsters", which are the top few snow encrusted feet of pine trees sticking out of the snow base. The wind whips the encrusted tops into all sorts of forms that resemble a variety characters. It's a stark reminder your standing on top of 60-80 feet of snow, or more.

Sounds like the vain attempt to communicate with the Aliens on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (the light/sound show thingy they used until the alien ship blew out all the lights).

Just like the band... On some of our chases here nobody wants to stop playing. Even when all the cards are on the table and it's self-evident the ship is sinking and already half sunk, the band keeps playing right to the very end. It's that glimmer of eternal hope that something may change, and the steadfast dedication to each other and a common skill/profession/hobby/curse we know as weather; the band continues to play on... Even when everyone agrees it's time to finish, the end is imminent and they attempt to disband, one hardy sole starts playing again and brings the group back together for one last encore.

One of the best posts ever. Thank you for keeping things real and in perspective; and for all you do to contribute to our forum and the science we all worship. I had grand plans in the late 70's to become a pro-Met. For various reasons, including an overnight stint with the NWS at Dayton, OH airport, I shifted gears and became an engineer. Some similarities in fluid dynamics, heat transfer etc. However, I've often wondered how things would have gone if I'd gone the Met route via Case Western or Penn State (that was my original track). None the less, engineering has been good to me. Been able to live a lot overseas and experience some of the most stark/extreme examples of weather that Mother Nature can muster. From 3 meter snows in the Alps, to 20+ meter snow depth in the Japanese Alps, to extreme heat in India, monsoons in India and Thailand. It's been a great ride. Your enthusiasm for the science and plain ole English way of outlining the variables at play has clearly generated a respectable following here on the forum. It's great when you and the other red taggers and more experienced hobbyists engage and exchange concepts. From this one humble former wannabe, thank you for the ongoing education. I've been a largely quiet follower here since day one and on EasterWX before and other forums since the mid 90's. It's always a pleasure to read more, post less and learn from the pros. Sincerely.

Yup - it's like the weather is not happy until all of us are not happy. (That one is best read with a clear and sober mind. It means the only way the weather is happy is when we are not happy)

119 members reading about the snow we're not going to get... ahhh, this cursed hobby of our's...

Nawww It's Lucy. She only needs one, until Chuck FINALLY gets ahold of one...

Band of WSW's up just SW of Charlottesville down to SC...

100 Pages!!!

Indeed on the humidity. Starting in April each year the heat builds day by day. By May/June it's in the 115-120+ range. Then in June the humidity would build up as well as a precursor for the onset of Monsoon season. The Delhi Times actually had a "Monsoon Watch" section that mapped the progression of the monsoon up the sub-continent. The Indian agriculture economy depends on it, even though thousands die from the flooding every year. When monsoon hit, the temps would drop to "only" the 110-115 range, with humidity in the 70% + range. The resultant heat index was wayyy off the charts. It was brutal and 3 showers a day were the norm. During the April to June dry spell many of the houses rented by the embassy off the compound would go weeks without getting a drop from the city. As a result, the embassy had 32 wells on the embassy compound and three 1500 gallon trucks that delivered water to off-compound housing 12 hours a day. Most houses had an underground cistern in the back yard to store and cool the water. The cistern at my home was about 8 feet deep and 8 feet long and 5 feet wide. All houses had roof top storage tanks that were fully exposed to the sun and full of water that would burn under ambient temperatures. During much of the year, the first thing you have to do in the morning is turn on the cold water in the shower to drain enough hot water from the roof top tank to prompt the pump in the cistern to pump cold water into the roof tank to cool the water enough to be able to stand taking a shower. It was entertaining at first, but got real old very fast. All of this in a country with 3 times the population of the US in an area about the same as the US east of the Mississippi. It reinforced how lucky we are in the USA and what we take for granted here.

You are invariably so kind. If moral support counted we would have exceeded climo a long time ago. You're eternal optimism is most noble. As for the heat - I can relate. Lived in New Delhi for 3 years in the early 90's when I was much younger and skinny (skinny = better heat dissipation!). Had 6 months of reasonably nice weather except for the SMIT in the winter (that's a combo of Fog and Sh*t because they burn it for fuel). The other 6 months hovered between 110 and 120+, with humidity the pushed the heat index wayyyy off the scale. It was beyond brutal. Made us wonder why in the annals of the migration of homo sapiens why they ever STOPPED in such an inhospitable place and didn't keep going for a better environment?

Sad thing the MLK thread has turned into. Wayyyy too many posters adding nothing of substance who should be reading more and not posting any. Agree with the comments from many about why some of the more valuable contributors have disappeared. It's exhausting to try to read the worthwhile comments from all the noise. Realize we're not in storm-mode, but geeze....

CWG's take on Sunday.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/01/12/dc-winter-storm-mlk-weekend/

Let me guess - water skiing at Grand Lake St. Marys?

Did she give you any cash back?

Indeed. Skiing is one of those things you need to invest a lot of time and money in (gear, travel, etc) before you get proficient enough to really enjoy it. Then once you do "get there", it's amazing. Another challenge to learning around here with the minimal vertical and long lift lines is time actually skiing. You can wait in line for 20 mins for a run that takes a min or two tops. You can ski more vertical in one run at a large resort in the Alps than you can in a full weekend of skiing around here. In the realm of practice makes perfect, time on the slopes is directly proportional to proficiency.

Agree - if you have the resources take lessons. Suggest taking a group class first. You can learn a lot from watching the others and learning what to do, and what to not do too. Then, take a private lesson and get an instructor to spend an hour or two with you. That can really help get you starting on the right foot. Mind you... I've only taken lessons once in my life

There's a lot of counter-intuitive aspects of skiing, and in the process of mastering them you'll encounter several ah ha moments where it just clicks. I cut my teeth in Ohio on 300 foot vertical bunny hill - the first time down I was terrified. A few years later I was skiing in the Alps, with the help of some Swiss friends who provided some key pointers. If you watch people that are good, they don't move a lot from the waist up. They swivel their hips/waist and do most of the "turning" from the waist down. Combined with a slight up and down motion timed with setting your downhill edge enables you to unweighten your skis for a moment to change directions and carve into the next curve. The less weight on your skis the easier it is to turn them. One exercise I used to do with beginners is have them hold their ski poles out in front of them in both hands - hold the bottoms of the poles in opposite hands and don't use them to plant in the show - use them as guides to force you to face downhill. Hold the poles perpendicular to the fall line as a means to keep your shoulders and upper body square with the slope. This helps force you to swivel your hips/waist while keeping your upper body pointed downhill. Another key thing to learn to ski well is to keep your body forward on your skis and your weight on your shins in your boots. This forces weight onto the front of your skis, which is critical to making good turns under control. When I apine skied I used to wear all the hair off the shins on both legs. Found out this was normal. Once you start leaning back in your boots and your weight moves to the back of your skis it's all over. As one experts Swiss told me, "you steer with the weight on the front of your skis because no matter where the front of your skis go the rear of your skis will follow. If your weight is on the rear of your skis, the front of your skis have no way to carve/control/guide the curve. Essentially the front of your skis are lost without your weight on them." You can practice this while traversing across a slope... as you traverse the hill, gradually make more turns quicker with a shorter interval. By making more turns you won't go any faster but you'll get down the hill much faster and under control. The steeper it is the more turns you make and the quicker you make them, without going any faster. When the time is right and you reach the advanced levels when you get on the really steep stuff, you can actually do double pole plants and unweighten yourself so fast it's almost like a jump. I've been on some really steep stuff off piste in the Alps that was so steep you could reach out with your hand w/o leaning into the slope and touch the slope above you. Of course if you fall you gotta know how to perform a self arrest with your poles. All the above is for traditional skiing with alpine gear. I switched over to telemark skiing in 1990 and have not gone back to alpine gear since. Telemark skiing is also known as free-heal skiing - you go down on one knee on each turn. It is much much more difficult than alpine skiing, but a lot of fun and an incredible workout. If you ever have a chance to try it, give it a shot. For some folks it's a natural progression in the sport of skiing.

Man... you REALLY know your Heathkit weather stations. I remember the needle wobble at low speeds that you mentioned. Was one of the quirks of in how it operated. Great memories...

Indeed - that's it!!! Now.... If only I knew where it is - buried someplace in a box in our basement. The weather station was always a little "off" after the blizzard of 78. It was as if gave in to the extremes. The night before the blizzard of 78 hit the barometer was dropping so fast we could almost watch it move live. (almost). My dad and I were out at our airplane hanger doing an engine overhaul. Given aircraft altimeters operate off barometric pressure, if you know your altitude you can measure the barometer. We could adjust the altimeter every 5 mins. My dad knew something serious was up with the weather, so we locked up early and went home. He double checked my weather station and then called the NWS at Dayton Airport to get the scoop and was informed of the pending blizzard, which exceeded their forecast by a long shot. He then started calling all the firemen in our little town and our local police and city maintenance crew to a meeting at the firehouse. The rest is history about the blizzard of 78.

Thanks for the walk down memory lane. You are far more versed on Heathkits than I. Regret I don't remember which model I have. Had 4 dials housed in a dark brown faux wood plastic case. For a teenager, I was very proud of my first Heathkit project. It set the course for a sequence of events that lead to a fun career... After the weather station, my parents bought me a Heathkit lab, but it didn't have the same impact as the weather station. A few years later, I learned to weld in high school (TIG, MIG and Stick) and used that to build the roll up door on our dad's airplane hanger and then the log splitter I built for my senior engineering project in college (it splits wood going both directions - still have the splitter now). It's too bad Heathkit no longer makes kits. As a motivational/educational tool, Heathkit was instrumental in encouraging an untold number of youth and adults in how to develop real-world hands-on skills which are lacking these days.

Indeed. I just turned 60 and still get as excited about snow now as I did when a youngster in elementary hoping for a day off from school. Of course, back int the 60's in Ohio it took a LOT more snow, ice and/or extreme cold to close school than it does today - especially around here. My wife of 25+ years doesn't understand me nor our collective obsession with snow and weather as a whole. She doesn't understand how I can go out on the Kubota and plow for 8+ hours, come home exhausted and then want to plow more after dinner. If the genetic scientists ever do figure out what the gene is responsible for our affliction, I hope and pray they don't engineer it out of future generations. There's something about the hope for snow, the challenge of seeing what mother nature can muster, and yes, even the occasional failure that makes the adrenaline rush when it does work out for us worth the despair when we fail. God I love it!!!

Wow, all the old time comments in the LR thread about the good ole days brought back memories. Built my first weather station in 1976, when I was 15. Was a Heathkit with base station and hard wired outdoor unit. Had indoor and outdoor temp, wind speed and direction and barometer. Soldered all the components on the board myself. Was so proud when it actually worked. The weather station performed well until I left Ohio in 1985. It even recorded a max wind gust of 73mph during the blizzard of 78 at our home just north of Dayton. We had it mounted 40 feet above the ground on our antenna tower so it got the full force of the wind. Wow... that wind in 78. Will never forget the howl. Great memories... Our dad actually made our first color TV in 1969. Also from Heathkit. He finished it just a couple months before the launch of Apollo 11 in 1969. Had a remote control too, which was unheard of back then. Was a mechanical/audible remote that used small running forks that clicked with each function. Was one of the first in town with a TV with a remote. I especially loved it because before dad finished that TV, I was the remote (being the youngest in the family, it was easiest for me to crawl to the tv to change the channel)