RDM

Or is it Lurkerweenie? (relative to the multifaceted interpretation of the weenie avatar) Oh sh*t - that's probably not suitable for those under 21.

Yeaaaa, I know.... no mercy here on this board whatsoever. Haha. Think about the only one older than me is usedtobe. Gosh darn young whippersnappers are infiltrating everything. Now, where is my Geritol?

Great pic PSU. I'm guessing that really ruined someone's day. Myself, couldn't help but laughing out loud when I saw it. Can just hear the insurance adjuster now. "You have a what? A broken hot dog bun?" How would they ever process the claim without cracking up? And what about the person the hot dog ran into??? How would THEY explain it? You got hit by a what??? As for all these comments about getting old at "20". Givemeabreak.... I'll be 58 in a month. Can't even remember what it was like when I was 20, other than the vivid memory of the blizzard of 78 in Ohio when I was 17.

Great writeup ShowMe. Really appreciate your analysis, the explanation of the variables involved, and the laymen's terms a mere mortal weenie wanabe like me can follow. The UL rotation around the GOM and Yucatan relates to the nearly tropical DPs we had here last week in advance of the front that came through. If the trough can bring down something along the eastern front of the Rockies and tap into that moisture at the same time the STJ reappears, it would seem we'd have the chance for a phased event. The SSTs along the OBX are still pretty warm to help fuel anything that spins up the coast and the WAR seems to have migrated far enough to the East that it won't kick something west of us. All of this is probably wishful thinking, but after last year and the year before, if wishing helps I'm all for it.

Remember that snow very well. Was in downtown DC when it hit taking some training for work. Rode into work that morning with a friend from Woodbridge who had an Isuzu Tooper. We put our snow skiing gear and my logging chain in his Trooper that morning before heading to work (sheer luck on throwing in the chain - that part comes later). It started snowing between 9 and 10 and by 11 the government decided to closed at noon. The chaos gripped the area very rapidly as it was a heavy wet snow that was very slick. Remember the big flakes that never let up. Instead of heading straight home, we helped a couple cars get out of the hilly parking lot at the compound on the Naval Observatory grounds across from the main State Dept Building on 23rd street. That delay cost us big time... Heard the reports about 395 being a parking lot, so we headed down the Mt Vernon Pkwy through Old Town. Found out later on the news there were over 1600 car abandoned around the roads just in the vicinity of the Pentagon - the news that night showed women in heels and men in wingtips trying to walk down Shirley Hwy. With all the abandoned cars the plows could not do their thing, although the plows were very late to the game anyway. That storm is one of the reasons why VDOT, MDOT and DCDOT send out the plows early now with the slightest hint of anything. It was slow heading South on the Pkwy through Old Town, but moving until we approached Mt Vernon. A couple of BIG pines had fallen across the Pkwy completely blocking both directions of travel. We put on our gear and commandeered people to pile inside, on top of, and hanging off the doors of his Trooper. They were literally hanging on the 4 open doors and sitting on the roof and hood to maximize the body count. At one point we had over 15 people on the trooper and the extra weight did it. We were able to use the logging chain to pull near the top of the trees and slide them around enough to open up one lane of travel in both directions. People where hooting and hollering and honking horns like crazy when we got the Pkwy open. Clearing the pkwy was alone an amazing experience I'll never forget, let alone the rest of the day's experience. Went through Ft. Belvoir only to sit in traffic stalled on Rt 1 southbound. Got turned around, went through Ft. Belvoir again and took Backlick Road over to I-95 and headed south. 95 south was crawling, but at least moving. Got to the bridge overpass where Pohick Road crossed 95 and my friend let me out - while still driving on 95. Yea, I know, pedestrians are not allowed on the interstate byways - at that point nobody gave a F... I climbed up the embankment, over a fence and walked the last 2 miles home on Pohick. As I crossed walked across the Pohick road bridge I looked back down on I-95, and there were half a dozen people following my tracks up the embankment from 95 to Pohick road. Guess they picked up on the idea. I had on my warm Gortex ski jacket and snowmobile boots - they had on dresses, suits and business attire. It was a pretty dire situation for many. From the time we departed the compound on 23rd street until I arrived home that evening was over 6 hours. That storm caught everyone by surprise including all of the big 3 network forecasters in the DC TV market. None of them called for anything more than flurries. The Weather Channel that morning said we could get a few inches, which is what prompted my friend and I to throw our gear in the Trooper that morning. The Weather Channel was VERY difference in the 80's and in a good way - you could actually stand to watch it back then. Never forget that event. Brought the DC Metro area to its knees...

Got down to 28 here, just outside the Tysons UHI - with 99% rh. Already up to 29 now. Thick frost on everything out in the open. No frost near or under any of the trees, even those with no leaves. Interesting how stark the contrast is between frost and no frost.

Ended up with 1.10" - mulched the leaves yesterday evening. Can't tell this morning. Was raining leaves almost a hard as rain this morning.

Been watching that band as well as it's parked over PW, FF and MOCO for the last several hours. What gives? Given the track of main low on a beeline from the GOM to the NE, was there some sort of UL element that prompted what the appearance of a pivot? Some of the radar returns out IVO Romney, WV have/had a slight SE track to them. If ONLY we were 25 degrees colder....

Think it's the moles. They do that to people... I feel bitter now too.

Zug, Welcome the continued rant and yes, I'm old enough... will be 60 soon. That's a great video and conveyed the experience trying to help my daughter with long division in elementary school. To this day I still don't understand the logic behind the method they taught her. The whole new math theory is as if some education major working on their thesis thought "I'll do my paper on options to make math as complicated as possible, that will SURELY get me an A, whether it makes sense or not!" And bingo, a trend was born. For those math majors out there, no offense intended. I was only a couple classes from a math minor in engineering school, but couldn't muster the courage to subject myself to more torture at the time. This theme is right up there with participation medals in organized sports; relative to the previous reference to no score T-ball leagues (what nonsense). Whether the parents want to admit it or not, the kids playing whatever sport knows who the best players are and who wins and looses. That core knowledge is motivation to the kids to try harder. Kids need to learn how to loose before they can fully appreciate winning, and do so graciously. Kids these days don't know how to loose, because everyone wins. That's not reality. In the words of WTOP, simplifying things down the most simple terms that are easiest to understand by all is a core value.

A pitchfork and a little patience does wonders for moles. Watch for em in your favorite chair with a bottle of Dinkelacker, upon detection of the little vermin thrust downward with the tines parallel to their tunnel for max penetration potential and withdraw. If the tine is wet with a tint of red, success, with no mess to clean up. Plus the rotting carcass is a deterrent to the rest to of the clan. Used to love watching my grandpa "go" mole hunting. Of course, he was infinitely patient when fishing too...

I loved geometry and trig. Yea, warped, but both are actually practically applied in every day life. Use em all the time in my shop. Now, differential equations, Laplace transforms and the like are for.... well.... I'm not really sure who they are for. (Joking re the applications, I just hated that "higher" level of math. Hard to focus on something you know you'll never use again, ever.)

Ok, I can't help myself... Beyond the battle between "it's" and "its" in this New Age English,... We have "to" and "too" and "has been" instead of the past tense verb. Hear it nearly every morning on WTOP when they talk about someone who "has been arrested for..." instead of saying "was arrested for..." And these are journalism majors? Hearing the utterance of "has been" brings back vivid memories of my 3rd grade English teacher nearly 50 years ago repeatedly scolding everyone in class. I can hear her now, "do you want to be a..., "HAS BEEN?" At the time we thought there was no worse title one could have as an adult. In the 3rd grade we can't wait to be 18 and be an adult. Hell, we would have rather been picked to pay right field in baseball during recess than to be called a "has been" for any reason. Everyone knows only the scrubs are picked to play right field, right? Oops, I forgot. We don't keep score anymore because everyone wins! (no score t-ball is a sore spot too, but I'll refrain) Then we have this new fangled idea of only using a single space after the period at the end of a sentence? Who came up with that stuff? Our brains are programmed to add a pause at the end of a sentence to separate thoughts and give both the narrator and listener a split second to comprehend a concept before moving on to the next. Been a constant point of debate with those charged with educating our daughter for the past 15+ years, to no avail. And next we have the excessive use of "that" mid-sentence for no purpose. In my former profession where concise content, accuracy and efficiency of the written word was paramount I challenged (note the use of past tense?) those more junior to read a draft to themselves without inclusion of the "that" they had needlessly inserted. They'd read it, read it again, and then you'd see the gears of learning start to mesh. More often than not, the use of "that" has no bearing on the overall message and is a waste, time to write and read. Ain't that just great? No doubt, being mere mortal engineer I've probably mucked up the above diatribe in more ways that one can manage to count with todays new way of doing math. Yet, I regress into another area where the USA is falling behind on the global education scale. However, we have our silent soccer leagues where we can vent our frustrations! Darn it, I got side-tracked again onto another tangent. But that takes trigonometry to understand. Do we still teach simple trig?

Definitely a nice day to be doing anything outside. With you on the 80's and music, 70's were't bad too. Yuengling is a decent brew. However PBR and MHL.... well... They are right down at the bottom with Hudepohl, who used to sponsor the Cincinnati Reds (I grew up in Ohio). Having lived in Germany for 6+ years, I'm sort of partial to Dinkelaker. Even a "normal" Romer pils is worth the trip to the largest brewery in the world outside the US.

Agree - currently at 95F with 60% rh and dp of 80 - gives a HI of around 107/108. How can there not be an advisory out?

Hey gang - pretty toasty out there today, no doubt. Now just imagine another 15 or more degrees and even more humidity. That's New Delhi around this time of year. HI is off the right end of most the HI charts here in the US.

A little late, but.... Our tally was 3.39" in a little over an hour NW of Vienna. Lawyers Road was closed in both directions from our house (our driveway is on Lawyers), leaving only one route out via a nearby sub-division. This happens a couple times a year or so on average on tributaries of Difficult Run. The high water mark left by the mud on Lawyers was a new max.

Good point - maybe not knowing it could be better was to their benefit in forcing adaptation.

Moved this to banter with the hope it will generate some discussion, and other war stories about extreme Heat Index. No doubt the 108/95 is up there. If that's the recognized record - ok. I don't have empirical data to outright challenge whatever the official record is. However, from personal experience living overseas in several areas with extreme conditions believe there's some environments that routinely push the 108/95 combination, if not exceed it. The main challenge IMO is finding reliable equipment that can measure the far end of the environmental spectrum that takes place in some of these areas. Just up the coast from Dhahran is good ole Kuwait. Being at the NW corner of the gulf when the wind blows just right from the SE the humidity comes in with a vengeance. Spent a lot of time there and it can be "pleasant" - as in relatively dry - in the morning and when the land heats up and draws in a fetch off the gulf the humidity rolls in and in a couple of hours can turn into an intolerable sauna. (Been to Dhahran and UAE too - was not as bad as Kuwait - typically) It was so humid in Kuwait that when you come out of an air conditioning building and put your cell phone in your pocket, the cool phone immediately condenses the moisture and soaks your pants. Looks like everyone outside pissed themselves, at least the newbies. Cell phone belt carriers rule the roost to help the condensate drip off outside of clothing. You can tell the newbies because they have the wet spot on their pants. The repeated cycles and exposure to moisture raises havoc with electronics/phones. Then there is India, where I lived for 3 years. During the "dry" months of March/April/May the heat was hot, and sometimes really hot (we had a max of 52.5C in Delhi when I was there, was hotter to the SW in the Rajistan Desert). in the months of March/April/May and early June it can be in the 113-118 range for weeks on end, with the heat building in anticipation of monsoon. That's a walk in the park compared to how it feels when the monsoon approaches and then unleashes it's torrent. We would have 105-112 and ungodly high humidity for the next few weeks until the rains started and "cooled" things down to only the upper 100's. You swear you could cut the air with a knife. In Delhi, 3 showers a day is the norm for those who can afford it. We had 3 water trucks and 32 water wells on the Embassy grounds that supplied water to those living on the economy (like me). Had a cistern in the back yard at my house and would go for weeks without a drop from the city. Was a godsend to call Embassy GSO and get the cistern filled, which would last me a week or so, depending.... All water pressure in the house was provided by the head pressure provided by having the holding tanks everyone has on their roof. Keeping in mind the ambient air temp is much hotter than you can stand to take a shower in, when I got up every morning the first thing I had to do was turn on the "cold" water in the shower, which was fed by the holding tank on the roof - full of hot water. With the water in the holding tank too hot to shower with, I had to drain the tank enough to force the pump in the cistern on to pump cool water from the cistern into the holding tank on the roof. This took about 20-30 mins depending on temps, time of day, sun angle, cloud coverage etc. Once the water in the holding take was tolerable you take the shower and go on about your business. Hated wasting all that water, but it was the only way. In India we had a weather station at the Embassy. Was crude by today's standards, but was considered rather reliable at the time. Starting in April, throughout much of May and June, the heat index was nominally at the upper end of the Heat Index (HI) spectrum, which in the USA ends around 150F on many charts. (yes, some HI charts go up to around 175F now). This went on week after week every year. With these various extremes in the HI, we used to make this observation that begs a question... The hunter/gatherer M/O that ruled the evolution of Homo Sapiens for millions of years drove mankind to seek comfortable environments in which to thrive. When Homo Erectus encountered the heat and stark environment of the middle east and the sub-continent, why did they stop? Why didn't they say, let's get the heck out of here and go someplace nicer? Yea, the climate was perhaps different in some of these areas a few thousand years ago or more. But still, why the heck stay there when it is so inhospitable?

Picked up .47" in 15 mins here NW of Vienna. Short but intense burst. Cooled things down from 86 to 74....

A little white mixing in with the rain here NW of Vienna. Can't really call it white rain yet. 35/34. Need to rates to have any hope.

41/31 - dp was up to 32 a few mins ago. If the dp was lower that would certainly help. Saw a post earlier from a Pro Met about the sounding at IAD with the drier layer aloft. Hope that bodes well for at least some white rain here in NOVA. As is, don't see us getting much of anything IVO of MBY. You folks up on Parr's Ridge and NW of MOCO should be setting good. Looks to be some decent rates later on today...

rotflmao - hilarious!

Same principle applied to citrus growers in FL when they spray water on their produce during freezing threats. The water helps protect the citrus from freezing. Very counterintuitive.

Temp just rose to 29/28dp. Was at 28 since the start at 05:15. Sleet only atm - hoping that inbound band does the needy...