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Hurricane Irene Obs/Discussion Thread


WxUSAF

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U.S. Park Police on NBC 4 just ticked off several streets closed due to high-standing water, mostly near near The Mall and "east bank of Anacostia." Also, I think, BW Parkway closed due to fallen trees and maybe Rock Creek out of its banks.

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Isabel knocked out power to 5 out of 7 Pepco customers (so over 500,000). I think it's a combination of a whole lot of reasons for why this storm hasn't already knocked out the same:

1)Wind direction is NE and N instead of SE like in Isabel-- a much more unusual direction for us

2)The ground wasn't as wet as in 2003

3)The snowstorms and two thunderstorms over the past couple of years have fallen the weaker trees already

4)The tree trimming operations helped

God help me, but I think we need to give pepco credit where credit is due regarding #4 on your list. They took down 3 trees just in my tiny little block in Glover Park (NW DC) alone. None of them were totally dead, but all of them would have been seriously vulnerable to a storm like this and would have shredded powerlines upon falling. At the time, I thought it was overkill. But the fact that I still have power is kind of amazing. Glover Park has been losing power 5-7 times per year the last few years. I'm probably jinxing myself, but I think we're going to make it tonight.

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Isabel knocked out power to 5 out of 7 Pepco customers (so over 500,000). I think it's a combination of a whole lot of reasons for why this storm hasn't already knocked out the same:

1)Wind direction is NE and N instead of SE like in Isabel-- a much more unusual direction for us

2)The ground wasn't as wet as in 2003

3)The snowstorms and two thunderstorms over the past couple of years have fallen the weaker trees already

4)The tree trimming operations helped

this is like a winter storm on steroids with the wind pattern. we also had that big wind event earlier this year... for some reason i cant remember when.

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I'm anxiously waiting for the sun to come up so I can take a look at the damage.

I wonder if sunrise will bring some better mixing for p-grad winds. I still have power - I am amazed. If I retain power I this will be the best storm ever purely because I got to experience it and never lost power for more than 5 seconds.

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^ I am impressed, just got my power back after 2-3 hours offline (pepco is my company). I dont know how they got it back up this fast but I thought it was going to be out for at least 3 days. Looks like they made some changes...

BTW I went for a 15 minute jebwalk.. winds were incredible )at least 35 or so sustained with gusts around 50 mph) but unfortunately I seem to be missing the gusts (I did get to experience one which was very intense).. So far I've been outside multiple times but only experienced 2 meaningful gusts which nearly knocked me over.

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^ I am impressed, just got my power back after 2-3 hours offline (pepco is my company). I dont know how they got it back up this fast but I thought it was going to be out for at least 3 days. Looks like they made some changes...

BTW I went for a 15 minute jebwalk.. winds were incredible )at least 35 or so sustained with gusts around 50 mph) but unfortunately I seem to be missing the gusts (I did get to experience one which was very intense).. So far I've been outside multiple times but only experienced 2 meaningful gusts which nearly knocked me over.

It might not be that. If you look at the PEPCO map, a lot of these outages are not the tiny 2-3 customer ones that we saw during the winter storm. These are big clustered ones (feeder lines). It might be a simple question of resetting breakers and stuff with a lot of the larger outages. Remember, when a surge occurs on one section of the grid, others go down to as a precaution.

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It might not be that. If you look at the PEPCO map, a lot of these outages are not the tiny 2-3 customer ones that we saw during the winter storm. These are big clustered ones (feeder lines). It might be a simple question of resetting breakers and stuff with a lot of the larger outages. Remember, when a surge occurs on one section of the grid, others go down to as a precaution.

I did not know this, and it would make sense given the circumstance, none the less I am still impressed with the fact that I've sustained power for the large majority of the storm.

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From my experience here in Petworth, I'd say the height of wind+rain was really between 11:00 and 12:30. Still have winds, but gustier with calmer periods in between -- not as sustained as before. And the rain is almost non-existent for the moment.

It appears that another heavier band is rotating in from the NE over the next 30-45 minutes, so perhaps we'll see things pick up a bit again...

What about you all? In terms of the overall storm experience, are you past the peak or is it yet to come?

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