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RDM

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Everything posted by RDM

  1. Based on radar returns the last band is passing through now. About .72" yesterday and .87" today so far. Not bad. Could have been better. Congrats to those who cashed in.
  2. .94" In the last 25mins. Some gusty winds in the outflow to ~30mph
  3. Rain-X really helps a lot with visibility in down-pours. Seriously. Been using it since the early 80's.
  4. Bright blue sky here with hardly any clouds overhead. Can see the line popping up to the NW. Getting active along the BR and 81
  5. Humm "down" to 92/70dp. Interesting drop in dp the last couple of hours. There was a rather stout derecho across Ohio this afternoon. Looked to be strengthening as it approached WVA, but in the last couple of frames of the radar it appears to be loosing punch.
  6. 97/78dp now on my Vantage VUE. 114.5F on the HI scale. NWS just expanded the Heat Watch further west.
  7. 94/78dp here - that's 110 on the HI scale Justifies the Excessive Heat Watch (EHW) - Seems they would make it a warning now? NWS already posted EHW's for tomorrow and Tuesday. Had one of our AC's serviced on Friday. The HVAC technician said they've been swamped. (No surprise - tough job in these conditions)
  8. Meant to say 89F with a dp of 81. As I was typing the dp went up even more. Yuk.
  9. 89F with a dp of 80. First time I recall having a dp of 81 here. Routine when we lived in Bangkok and Japan, but not here. HI of around 108 already. Going to be a toasty day.
  10. 1.07" for the event - half of it in the last batch that came through an hour ago. Not bad...
  11. .33" so far here. A nice soaker at the moment. Hope the returns from the south keep coming our way. Everyone needs it. Next week is looking to be brutal.
  12. Had some of the hardest rain I've seen for a while out near Dulles when the line came through. Poured for about 15 mins with visibility a 1/4 mile or less. Had a very solid double rainbow on the back end with the hint of a triple. Received .82" here at home NW of Vienna.
  13. Yup - thanks. Have a couple timers - work well for grass. Not so much for watering trees and bushes that need a big gulp to be effective. Fortunately, we're on well water so the water bill is nill other than the expense of replacing the well pump periodically, which we did a few weeks ago. Not cheap, but we're getting great flow out the end now. One of those things I contemplated doing myself, but watching the pros do their thing was impressive.
  14. Still 78 with a 75dp at 1am. When I got home from work I watered some plants and young cherry trees. The ground is so hard it took a while for the water to soak in. Dragging 400' of 3/4" garden hose around the yard was not much fun in the early evening heat.
  15. Still 82F at 2am with a dp of 68. Humm, could the humidity be dropping? (maybe wishful thinking)
  16. High of 99 today. With the HI it was pretty rough out there. Down to 88 with a dp of "only" 75 now. Yuk
  17. Low of only 76. Currently 86/78dp - ouch.
  18. At last! .52" out of the band migrating across FFCO.
  19. 90/77 already, at 1040am. Had planned to work outside part of today... May need to rethink that.
  20. Just came in from spending about 5 hours outside. (nasty dp) Got a few dozen drops a couple of times only to see the cells pop just a couple miles to the east. Ground is hard as rock - have only managed .64" for the entire month.
  21. Thanks for your story - glad the damage was not worse and nobody was injured. Had a similar experience in 1998 at our first house in Springfield, VA shortly after getting married. Had a big t-storm come through. My wife, daughter and I were standing inside the front entrance watching the hail when lightening struck a large pin oak in our front yard about 25 feet away. It was a very big tree with a trunk 2'+ in diameter and the first limb about 15 feet off the ground. The lightening blew off much of the bark on one side of trunk. Slabs of bark 10' long blew all over the place, with some pieces ending up inside our living room. The strike followed an underground root over to a concrete downspout basin where it electrically connected with re-bar inside the concrete and then the downspout, and then the house. Blew a trench in the ground the entire path well over a foot deep, which blew dirt, rocks and sod everywhere. It would not have been pretty if we were standing outside with potentially harmful projectiles flying around. Found rocks and chunks of sod 50+ feet away in the street. Lost a couple windows in the front of the house, several outlets and had to have our electrical panel in the basement replaced. It was in the corner of basement where the downspout electrically propagated the strike to the house. Discovered after the fact the rebar in the downspout was exposed on one corner, which was the continuity to the house. Could see the char on the underside of the concrete where the electrical charge scoured the concrete. When it struck we lost our hearing for several minutes. My wife and daughter were in shock. We couldn't talk to each other but I verified they were ok and called 911. Told the operator what had happened and that I could not hear anything and could not respond to any questions. I kept the dispatcher on line in a one-way conversation and inspected the house with fire extinguisher in hand before heading up to the attic, which had the same electrical stench. The stench of burnt electrical items permeated the house, especially the basement. Fortunately, there were no sustaining flames. The fire department used a hand-held thermal heat detector to verify there was nothing burning inside the walls. Then they departed and the cleanup began as our hearing slowly returned. We were also fortunate there was no serious fire and no injuries. Will never forget the sound, flash and flying debris. And that ringing - it was nearly debilitating.
  22. Interesting day... made it up to 101 at our place. Brought back memories of living in India back in the early 90's (when I was skinny and could dissipate heat better!). In Delhi the temps would nudge up a little almost daily through April and May before maxing out in June. In my 3 years there we routinely hit 115-118 for weeks on end, with a max around 123 one summer - think it was 1994. As the monsoon rains migrated across the sub-continent from the SE to the NW in late June through July, the temps subsided some with the increase in humidity. But temps still stayed in the 108-115 range with humidity so thick you could taste it. The HI was way off the charts used by the NWS in the US, easily in the 130+ range. It was brutal. About the only thing the air conditioners did in my house was provide a few comfortable zones in each room. As a comparison, the ambient air temp was so hot the water in holding tanks on the roof of my house was much hotter than you could stand to take shower in. Some tanks were covered to try to keep the sun off the tanks, but that didn't help much with ambient temps above 115F. (Most of the tanks are black poly, which made the water even hotter with most of the tanks exposed to the sun). The first thing I had to do every morning was turn on the "cold" water (at well over 100F) to drain the roof tanks enough to start the pump in the backyard cistern, which would pump cool water from the underground storage cistern into the rooftop tanks. After about 10 mins of mixing the water was cool enough to take a shower, barely. It was a daily routine about 5 months of the year, every year. All the above was complicated by rolling brown-outs that interrupted power daily from a couple of hours to much longer. Then during the drier months the city water reduced to a trickle, and often ran dry for weeks at a time. Fortunately, my house had a 35kw generator and the Facilities crew in the Embassy had three 1500 gallon water trucks that filled the cistern in the back yards of embassy employees (most people had a cistern). In the driest periods the trucks ran 18 hours a day non-stop. Fortunately, the embassy had 20+ deep water wells on the embassy grounds and a 150k underground tank, which was used to fill the tanker trucks. It was an impressive feat of logistics to keep everyone in the embassy supplied with water. The entire experienced helped me appreciate what we take for granted here in the good ole USA.
  23. the dp on my Vantage VUE seems high though...
  24. 96F with a dp of 77. Yup gross. Only a few degrees more and a dp in the low 80's and we've got the weather in Bangkok.
  25. Just had a pretty intense 10 mins of hail in Vienna. Up to about nickel size. Was really coming down hard for about 5 mins. When it finished the sun was out.
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