RDM

1.07" for the event - half of it in the last batch that came through an hour ago. Not bad...

.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.

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.

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.

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.

Still 82F at 2am with a dp of 68. Humm, could the humidity be dropping? (maybe wishful thinking)

High of 99 today. With the HI it was pretty rough out there. Down to 88 with a dp of "only" 75 now. Yuk

Low of only 76. Currently 86/78dp - ouch.

At last! .52" out of the band migrating across FFCO.

90/77 already, at 1040am. Had planned to work outside part of today... May need to rethink that.

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.

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.

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.

the dp on my Vantage VUE seems high though...

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.

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.

It's that time of year - April. The super-outbreak of tornados on 3/4 April 1974 was one for the record books. Recall it well. Xenia, Ohio was demolished - about 25 miles from our home just North of Dayton. First responders provided mutual aid from throughout the Dayton area, and as far away as Columbus and Cincinnati. The F-5 that plowed through the center of Xenia left a path that is still visible today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Xenia_tornado Our dad and several firefighters from our local volunteer department in New Carlisle provided support for many days with our rescue truck - which was advanced for the era. Families in town donated food which was ferried down to Xenia to feed our team, plus other first responders. About a week after the tornado hit our dad drove us through the center of town - only getting by the National Guard checkpoints because of the big red light on top of his red and white Rambler. The destruction was unworldly and unforgettable. There were over 30 F4/F5s in that outbreak. Was beyond extreme in the intensity of the tornados and their duration on the ground.

Yup several rumbles here IVO Vienna. Pouring outside - at 45F.

Thanks for the pictures. The sounds from the howitzers brings back memories of my time in the Alps. Lived in Germany 2 different times and skied all over the Alps (I telemark). They use a variety of methods to initiate controlled avalanches. Depending on the area and conditions, they may use howitzers also, or recoilless rifles mounted on vehicles, or artillery in strategic locations concealed behind fake fiberglass rocks, or bye helicopter, or by cable systems strung between ridge lines, or via hand by ski patrol or thrown from gondolas. They do it and have it down to the art.

Yup - bust here too just NW of Vienna. Right at an inch. Driveway totally melted last night - even the stepping stones by our deck melted. Went out for a feeble attempt at a Jebwalk around 0200 and it was coming down nice, until the sleet started mixing in. At that point it was over. Big disappointment around here. Congrats to those who scored 4+. Amazing with today's computing power how most the models missed it until the retraction started a few hours from the start.

Ground starting to cabe here already. SN and SN+ at times. One of the quickest changeovers I recall seeing around here. Transition came in with a gust of wind and 2F temp drop that only took a minute. IMG_9714.MOV

Was 38F and raining here until about a min ago. A gust of wind brought the changeover and within a couple mins it transitioned to all SN. Ripping pretty good now at 36F.

Sorry for the banter but... LMAO - given your superb vocabulary skills I actually looked up "redonculous" with the thought "that's a new one!" Alas, my expectations were grounded. haha.

Geeze - with the exception of one bump/ridge over the eastern Atlantic, that jet is roaring nearly around the entire globe. It's like the entire PV has been enlarged and displaced south a couple thousand miles.

205 Views in the first 13 mins. Great start Randy! Oops - I mean Bob Chill since he MADE you do it!