What is your most memorable non winter event living in the DMV?

[yoda]

Well?

I would have to say Isabel is #1 for me... spent a long time tracking it in school (thanks to my ASL teacher who I was TA'ing with and wanted to know all about Isabel and was a weather nerd herself). I was disappointed when the Hurricane Warnings came out and stopped just short of the Potomac River... wind gusts to 70 mph in my backyard during the squalls and rain shield brought down a few trees and large branches...

Derecho is #2, mainly because I missed it (was out of town) in FL the day we were traveling down and had to watch/track it on my computer

 

[George BM]

 

1.   September 18-19, 2003- On this day I was 7 years old and about to experience my first hurricane. She claimed the name Isabel and the whole day I was watching with much excitement the wind and rain increase in intensity. That night all of the trees in my Falls Church neighborhood were doing hardcore core salsa dancing. I saw a flash of lightning which I only recently realized was probably a power flash. The following morning, since I was only 7 years old and it was my first hurricane experience, I was expecting to see my slightly hilly neighborhood flooded with water from the storm surge all the way from the ocean. But when I looked outside there was no flooding and the rain had apparently stopped hours ago. Three trees in my neighborhood had apparently partied too hard during the night and had fallen over. A few more trees and limbs had fallen in every other surrounding neighborhood that I saw. I would gestimate based on the damage that I saw that winds gusted to 60-65 mph during the night.

2.   June 29, 2012- Extreme heat and humidity with the temperature reaching 102F at KIAD and 104F at DCA along with dewpoints in the low/mid 70's made for a day with extreme instability while a derecho approached from the WNW. This created a feeling of excitement and adrenaline that kept me wired throughout the day. Of course the derecho came that night with what I estimated to be 50 to 60 mph wind gusts in my neighborhood (which was pretty much one of the least affected areas around DC when it came to wind reports with areas within a mile of me getting close to if not hurricane force wind gusts. (71 mph at KIAD, 79 mph at Reston) Still enough to get some adrenline pumping though.

3.   October 29, 2012- On this day Hurricane Sandy married a strong trough at a latitude farther south than the latitude we usually see these marriages. This causes Hurricane Sandy to make an unusual left hook into New Jersey that evening. Wind gusts of 60 to 80 mph were expected in my neighborhood that evening however this storm ended up being one of the most overhyped storms at least for MY neighborhood. The same definitely can’t be said for areas further northeast, especially places like New Jersey and Long Island, New York. That night my neighborhood received some wind gusts up to 50 mph, just a regular northeaster strength wind in my book. 

[540]

Tropical Storm Agnes - June 21 -22, 1972.

Rain was literally coming through our walls in Wheaton.

[MN Transplant]

TS Lee

[H2O]

Isabele, Irene, Derecho, Lee, western Fx Co tornado in the late 80s

[BlizzardNole]

1.  September, 1971:  Tornado that touched down near the Beltway and ripped through Kettering, MD causing a lot of roof and tree damage.  I was only 4 but I will never forget that whistling/roaring sound, and my dad screaming "get in the basement!!!"  Plus my older sibs telling me afterwards that another one was gonna come LOL. 

2.  July 10, 1978:  Kettering again -- massive, baseball sized hail that caused huge car, window and roof damage.   My parents watched helplessly as window after window on one end of the house shattered.

 

[Bob Chill]

July 4th 2014

[gymengineer]

I weight impact high when I rank snowstorms, so it's the same with non-winter events. 

1) Isabel ('03). It was not the strongest winds, nor anywhere close to the most rain, but it was clearly the highest impact event. We did not have power for about 72 hours, which was the longest power outage I've experienced. And the power outages were so widespread that it was arduous to drive away from home because of all the stoplights that were off. But more than that single stat, it was the experience as a whole that made it noteworthy.

First phase was the anticipation. Lower Montgomery County had experienced a severe thunderstorm in late August that had knocked out plenty of power. So, when my coworkers asked me what Isabel would be like the day before, I said it would be like that thunderstorm, except ebbing and flowing for more than 12-hrs instead of the 30-minutes for a thunderstorm.  The local news was split about the extent of the effects-- Topper Shutt on WUSA9 was conservative in his estimate of power disruptions while Doug Hill was going for a once-in-a-generation event. 

We had the entire Thursday off, and the Fed Gov't closed early, so most people were home before the first rain bands moved through between noon and two. The first couple of bands were gusty to about 35 mph. But, what was most noticeable was that the sustained winds were already stiff in the 20's. This felt different than a thunderstorm. By 3:30, our power was flickering, and it went out for good at around 4 pm. At that point, the sustained winds were very noticeable even though the gusts hadn't gotten up to severe thunderstorm level. It was just a continuous lashing back of the trees from an unusual wind direction. 

With power out, we ate dinner from a propane cook-top before the sun went down. After sunset, it was completely dark, and we just listened to the wind, as we weren't prepared enough to have a battery-operated radio. During a lull around 8 pm, I went outside to my car in order to listen to the car radio for updates. The WTOP updates were blaring the flood warnings and suggested many hours ahead. I used the landline to call a friend out of the area, directed her to locating a local radar on the internet, and asked her to describe what was headed towards DC. She did her best, but it wasn't quite enough detail to paint a full picture. 

Exhausted from all the pre-storm tracking, and with nothing else to do in the dark, I went to bed around 10 pm. That means I missed the peak of the sustained winds right around midnight. But, I did experience the highest gusts in the storm which blasted through at various times between 4 pm and 1 am. 

The next morning, we used the landline to call around to see if any of our friends had electricity still. One family did, so we drove through all the dark stoplights to get to their house late morning. On our street, there were numerous downed branches, and our neighborhood had multiple downed tall trees, including ones that fell on houses. 

At our family friends' house, I saw the video on NBC4 of the ongoing Annapolis storm surge flooding, and was struck by the row of power poles downed in western Montgomery County. Even though the max gusts did not poke into the 60-70 mph range as forecast, they were high enough from the SE on top of the soggy soil after a wet summer to cause PEPCO's biggest outage ever. About 5 out of 7 customers lost power. That has not been matched since, neither by the 1/11 snowstorm nor the 2012 Derecho. 

 

 

[NorthArlington101]

Hmmm... I've got nothing really. I guess the 2012 Derecho but I actually managed to sleep through it. The damage after was obviously impressive to wake up to. I was too young for Isabel.

[jacindc]

The derecho. The way those winds hit at maximum force without hardly a momentary breeze in front of them was unbelievable.

(and boy was I glad I had gotten my huge overgrown sycamore trimmed three days earlier)

 

[WVclimo]

Agnes in western Md was one of the seminal events that fueled a life-long interest in weather for me.  Creeks that were typically 15-20 feet below the level of  area roads swelled onto those roads, across railroads and surged through neighborhoods that were normally far from the water.  To this day I haven't experienced flooding as severe as that.

I was living in Bethesda for Isabel, and drove home from work in PG county about 4:00 the afternoon the storm moved in, on a largely deserted Beltway.  When I arrived home, my oldest son, who had just turned 3 told me he was scared that a tree would fall on our house.  I assured him we would be safe.  We lost power shortly after I arrived home, and didn't get it back for four days.  In the dark, and cut off from radar left us to wonder how intense things would get.  It actually wasn't as bad as feared, but as it turned out the house directly across the street had a large tree fall right through the front of it.  No one was hurt, but I remember my boy saying that was just the way he had imagined it.

Sandy over performed here, given how far inland we are.  We had trees down on our property and part of the roof torn up, as it tracked almost due west at our latitude after landfall in south Jersey.  I never thought an ocean storm could pack that kind of punch this far from the coast.

 

[MN Transplant]

5 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

TS Lee

Adding a few others:

the earthquake (not weather, but so cool)

June 2006 storms/flooding

Sandy (more for the buildup)

 

Missed the derecho, Irene and wasn't here yet for Isabel.  I imagine the derecho was awesome.

 

[87storms]

there was a lightning strike that hit my next door neighbor's house as a kid while i was literally walking towards the screen door.  permanent memory. lol

other than that, isabel and the derecho probably round out my top 3.  there's been other memorable events and honorable mentions, but those are probably the biggies.

[87storms]

11 minutes ago, MN Transplant said:

Adding a few others:

the earthquake (not weather, but so cool)

June 2006 storms/flooding

Sandy (more for the buildup)

 

Missed the derecho, Irene and wasn't here yet for Isabel.  I imagine the derecho was awesome.

 

the lightning from the derecho was probably the craziest part.  it was like a disco.

[George BM]

34 minutes ago, 87storms said:

the lightning from the derecho was probably the craziest part.  it was like a disco.

The interesting thing that I noticed about that storm was that it was some of the most vivid lightning that I'd seen in person. Yet there was very little audible thunder during the meat of the storm. The thunder became more audible again afterwards.

[87storms]

6 minutes ago, George BM said:

The interesting thing that I noticed about that storm was that it was some of the most vivid lightning that I'd seen in person. Yet there was very little audible thunder during the meat of the storm. The thunder became more audible again afterwards.

yea, i noticed that too.  it was like the war of the worlds scene.

[southmdwatcher]

April 28, 2002 La Plata tornado. That was the mother of supercells to hit this region in recent memory.

[NorthArlington101]

Adding a few others:

the earthquake (not weather, but so cool)

June 2006 storms/flooding

Sandy (more for the buildup)

 

Missed the derecho, Irene and wasn't here yet for Isabel.  I imagine the derecho was awesome.

 

Forgot about the earthquake! That was so cool. Everybody has to have a "where were you when the earthquake hit" story. Another good thread, think the anniversary is coming up (or just happened).

[mattie g]

TS Lee and the 2012 derecho, probably in that order. Except for seeing the swath of felled trees down near Williamsburg a few months later, I honestly don't even remember Isabel!

Lee: It simply poured buckets for hours and hours, ending with upwards of 8" of rain ion the day, after getting a few inches the day before. I've mentioned this many time, but that event ended with my basement flooding, water through the ceiling, and the walls of one of our bathrooms falling apart due to water damage. It was ugly, and I don't want that to happen again. As a homeowner, I'm truly scarred from it!

Derecho: The big thing for me was trying to get some sleep early in the evening because my wife (who was about 3.5 months pregnant at the time), dog, and I were planning to head out for HHI at about 2:00 am. It was so hot that day that I couldn't get comfortable - the AC simply couldn't keep up. I finally grabbed an hour or two of shuteye, then woke up just before it hit. We went downstairs as a safety precaution and watched it through the windows. Crazy stuff with that wall of wind and all the lightning. Power went out almost immediately. We decided to try to get a little more sleep on the sectional since it was a little cooler downstairs, but it didn't work so well.

We headed out at about 1:00 am. It was such an eerie feeling driving through Burke/Springfield to all darkness (except for one small grid of homes that was still lit). Even the huge shopping center at the Springfield interchange was dark. We also saw the police and fire vehicles that responded to the unfortunate incident in which a tree fell on a car on Old Keene Mill Road and killed the driver.

We stayed out of town for over a week, and apparently the power was out for five days in our neighborhood. I had a buddy come over and clean out our fridges after about day 3. He got a bottle of very expensive scotch for his efforts!

 

 

[540]

10 hours ago, MN Transplant said:

Adding a few others:

the earthquake (not weather, but so cool)

June 2006 storms/flooding

Sandy (more for the buildup)

 

Missed the derecho, Irene and wasn't here yet for Isabel.  I imagine the derecho was awesome.

 

If you include non-weather events, the 3/7/70 near-total (95%) eclipse is my most memorable event. At its peak it looked like a VERY bright full moon here, near mid-day. This year's will be in the 80% range here, I believe, so I expect the effect to be much less dramatic.

[Stormpc]

Isabel

Derecho

Earthquake and aftershock 2 nights later

Centreville tornado in 1996

 

[yoda]

2 hours ago, NorthArlington101 said:

 

Forgot about the earthquake! That was so cool. Everybody has to have a "where were you when the earthquake hit" story. Another good thread, think the anniversary is coming up (or just happened).

 

 

August 23

 

[jacindc]

1 hour ago, 540 said:

If you include non-weather events, the 3/7/70 near-total (95%) eclipse is my most memorable event. At its peak it looked like a VERY bright full moon here, near mid-day. This year's will be in the 80% range here, I believe, so I expect the effect to be much less dramatic.

I'm going to be in the 95% range on Aug. 21, and am trying to decide whether to drive 2 1/2 hours south for the full eclipse. Feels like a bit of a gamble--traffic (though this is north-central Wyoming) and changeable weather. Nice to know that 95% is still pretty good.

 

[BTRWx]

Our non-winter snow that fell October 29, 2011 tops the list for me!

[Sparky]

I know I have mentioned this before but my top or close to my top weather event to leave an impression on me was a series of thunderstorms on the evening of August 1, 1971.   The hardest hit areas were east/northeast Baltimore (where I lived) into nearby sections of the county - Essex, Rosedale, Perry Hall, Parkville, Joppa, Middle River, White Marsh, Dundalk.  The entire city saw some effects but from the Jones Falls eastward it was the worst.   The storms featured some of the loudest, continuous thunder I have ever heard combined, of course, with close CG lightning which took down many trees in the neighborhoods.   Winds were strong and gusty, at times, and there was a small period of hail at the beginning.  But the real anomaly was the intensity of rainfall.  Many areas that I mentioned had well over 8 inches in roughly a 2 hour period, the biggest documented total was close to 13 inches in the White Marsh area.  This resulted in significant flooding, roads washed out over the tiniest of creeks and rivers, basements full of water to the rafters in some homes, and unfortunately loss of local life, 16 deaths were attributed to the flooding including 4 fireman rescuers.  People lost their lives driving into washed out roads and swept away into the creeks and in the city there was a death or two caused by people being swept into storm drains or sucked down into opened manhole covers.  It was the most locally damaging series of storms I have ever witnessed........  Oddly enough, less than a year later, in June 1972 the remnants of Hurrican Agnes left perhaps the second biggest (non-winter) impression on my life as far as weather is concerned.

[GramaxRefugee]

Agnes in 1972, but l would like to mention hurricane Floyd in September 1999. Due to strange circumstances. We lived at a little house in Laurel where we never lost power before. I had been trying to get BGE to trime trees in our tiny backyard under the power lines. After the storm went through, there was plenty of power out. I drove home from work to find the local FD closed our street due to lines down. I walked up to my metal fence gate and found it was welded shut. How odd! Was a weak weld, and I busted through with effort. Went to the crawl space to find a copper water supply pipe cracked and leaking. Went to shut the water valve and noticed there had been a small fire or explosion, fotunately put out by the water break. All evidence of a lightning strike maybe, but in fact the power line had fallen in the neighbors chain link fence, welded my gate, traveled through copper flashing on the sill plate, (was kind of old house), sparked to the copper water pipe, then  ground. Had hit a small car in the parking area behind us and burned it completely to the ground. Never could ID it, might have been a Nissan. Power out 4 days.

I sent photos of the burned out car to BGE, and they finally trimmed the trees.

Can't believe I typed all that.

Eta: Dammit, this landed in the wrong thread/tab

K, how's that?

[PrinceFrederickWx]

Floyd

Isabel

Having an earthquake while tracking Irene

Lee

Sandy

July 2010 heat

July 2011 heat

July 2012 heat

9/29/2015 storm/flooding - 5.02" 

9/28/2016 storm/flooding - 5.02" again lol

February 2017 hail storm

 

[nw baltimore wx]

On 8/9/2017 at 1:20 PM, BlizzardNole said:

1.  September, 1971:  Tornado that touched down near the Beltway and ripped through Kettering, MD causing a lot of roof and tree damage.  I was only 4 but I will never forget that whistling/roaring sound, and my dad screaming "get in the basement!!!"  Plus my older sibs telling me afterwards that another one was gonna come LOL. 

2.  July 10, 1978:  Kettering again -- massive, baseball sized hail that caused huge car, window and roof damage.   My parents watched helplessly as window after window on one end of the house shattered.

I remember both of these events. 

Ad a side note, my best non-weather event in Kettering was when Ronnie Bryant and I were walking through the cornfield from your house to the underground fort that we had built with your brother in the middle of the same field, and we saw him running at us with eyes the size of saucers screaming, "Copperhead!!!"

Man. Good times!

[smokeybandit]

Back to back storms of Irene and Lee.  Only because my window well in the basement was clogged (didn't really figure it out yet at the time) and I was bailing water out of it during both storms.  A couple sleepless nights.

For Sandy, the anticipation was huge (made my wife and then-six month old sleep in the basement) but it ended up pretty much a non-event, thanks to that cold front that kept the high winds aloft.

[Kmlwx]

On 8/10/2017 at 10:23 AM, WxWatcher007 said:

I forgot about the earthquake! I was in CT and remember where I was, looking down and a cup of water I had as it started shaking. Proud to say I didn't panic lol. Man, the end of 2011 was incredible from an interesting event perspective. That thread you posted is awesome. I pulled two of the best posts from the first few pages. Some things never change  

 

 

Wow. I forgot I started the quake thread. Probably the most famous thing I'll ever be known for on this website.