The Weather Thread

[pumpkinpi]

I think I know what it is like to have the eye of a hurricane pass over your house.

We had an incredible storm Friday night. It made the national news--650,000 homes without power in Minnesota. The worst storm in history according to those statistics.

The wind was so strong and the rain was blowing sideways--I can't even describe how awful it was but if you've been through it you know what I mean. It lasted for about a half hour.

The damage all around the metro was incredible. I rode my bike and drove my car through my town on Saturday and saw the same thing over and over. Half the houses had big branches down that they were chopping up and putting in piles at the curb. Every street had one to two big trees uprooted, some even more. They were mostly big pine trees that fell. One house on my street had three fall--one on their house. Of all the down trees I saw (maybe two dozen? more?) that's the only one that had fallen on a house, but I know there were many more. The next street over had three trees fall between two houses.

We had a few big branches fall and will lose some shading but are so much better off than other. If our big pine had fallen it would have blocked our yard.

We lost power from about 8 p.m. Friday to midnight Saturday. We stayed out most of the day Saturday. Despite the warm, muggy day, our house stayed cool so it wasn't uncomfortable when we came home. The most frustrating thing was not being able to get our lanundry done.

We're still in a stormy weather pattern. It's nice right now but there is a chance for severe storms and 4" more rain through Thursday. But we're keeping our fingers crossed that next weekend will be the first without precipitation since early April. And I'm not joking--a couple weeks ago on the news I heard it had been 12-13 weeks in a row. Noticed I said "precipitation" because that brings us back to our spring snowstorms.

[Thumper]

Thought we got the remnants of your storms yesterday. Nothing like what you experienced. But enough thunder and lightning to knock me out of bed and scare the dog. Good light soaking rain last night. Then a swamper on the commute this morning. It was raining so hard I almost had to downshift to push through it. Stormy pattern supposed to continue through the weekend if not through next week.

We got the windstorm that PPi talked about almost one year ago to the day. Power outages and downed trees plauging people for weeks if not months. Parents were out of town for the summer. I got to be point man for the downed tree limbs and garage damage to their property.

[Rebis]

...if it doesn't rain soon, I'm going to scream...

(our rainy season SHOULD start by early July at least!)

[Thumper]

We've had off and on rain just about every day for the last 2 weeks. Well last night it came down. It all came down. The 36" tile under the driveway up by the road was shooting a column of water like a firehose toward the neighbor's pond that was overfilled and had topped the dock. The smaller tile closer to the house was no match for the torrent of water coming across from the adjacent field. There was 4 feet of water on the high side of the driveway, rapids topping the driveway, and whitewater all the way across the front yard. The back creek, which is often dry this time of year sounded like the Upper Gauley, and water was hitting the bottom of my bridge. Further down at the property line, the "creek" was a good 20' wide. More rain and storms expected the rest of the week.

[Parrothead]

Sections of downtown massively flooded, yesterday evening. Included the section of Lakeshore Blvd, that will be hosting two Indycar races this coming weekend. Things not bad in my area, only issue was power went out around 6:30 pm, restored sometime overnight.

Currently overcast, humid and possibility of more thunderstorms.

[Loresinger]

yep we've had the similar pattern - hot, humid, wring the air out, rain... then sun and hot

fruit loves it tho.

[cid]

Been hotter'n'blue blazes, 95ish during day, hi 70's at night, humididity out the hooraw, too damned hot to sleep inside so i snore off the night on the front porch on the padded bench with my bug candle night light on the table...
Right now it's comin' down like a cow p!$$!n' on a flat rock, and it's supposed to be cooler and rainier for the next few days. Fine with me -- I can deal with water in the form of rain better than dissolved in the air...further reports as circumstances warrant...

[gethen]

97F here on Friday. 48F this morning when I got up. how do you acclimate to that?

[Rommie]

Dutch heat wave- got up to like 84F yesterday, today's high is projected at 85F... no rain in like two weeks too, which is insane!

Went to the beach by a lake with some friends yesterday and we were all astounding ourselves by swimming in the water (ie it's warmed up enough) and getting a little sunburnt in places we forgot to reapply sun cream. So yeah, we actually have summer this year in the Netherlands. Of course the main issue is I sure as hell don't have A/C so my little electric fan is doing overtime... luckily work DOES have A/C so there's a good reason to show up. I did break down today though and take the air conditioned train in instead of cycling, since geez I didn't want to show up at work drenched in sweat.

[pumpkinpi]

After experiencing more than a week of high temperatures over 90 (both here and in Maryland) and heat indices even higher, it was a beautiful and cool 60ish for my bike ride in this morning with a high in the 70s. It won't get much higher than 80 for the next week or so. Perfect.

[Rommie]

So hot last night I slept on the roof.

Well until like 4am when I realized the problem with sleeping on the roof is if you wake up cause you have to go to the bathroom it's pretty inconvenient, so I went down- bedroom was still too hot so I slept on my couch.

Funny thing is it sounds like out of my friends I wasn't the only one who slept on a balcony etc by a long shot...

[FZR1KG]

How hot can it get in the Arctic?

[Rommie]

30C+ these past few days at 53 degrees north.

Issue is more I'm on the 4th/top floor and the house/ bedroom in particular is old and designed for keeping in heat in a normally damp and old country. So even with the fan and window open good luck getting air to circulate properly.

[Loresinger]

We were in the living room until the rains came. I got up and moved because my back hurt and Iky was sound asleep.

When he finally came to bed he asked, "you didn't tell me you were going to bed; woke up and where you were sitting there was a dog"

My reply, "I'm a transformer"

[SciFiFisher]

We were in the living room until the rains came. I got up and moved because my back hurt and Iky was sound asleep.

When he finally came to bed he asked, "you didn't tell me you were going to bed; woke up and where you were sitting there was a dog"

My reply, "I'm a transformer"

The proper term is "shape shifter". If you insist on being bourgeois you can use the term "wer dog"

[cid]

Things have cooled off wonderfully here. Daytime in the hi 70's, nites down to mid-50's.
The coolish breeze finally venting and cooling the house, the white noise of a gentle shower...
I haven't slept this well in months.

[Rommie]

Holy FUCK it's windy out!

Giant storm blowing through the UK and the Netherlands right now- not really rain so much as 120 kmph (read: 75mph!) wind gusts currently rocking through, all public transport is down (but still got power for now as in Amsterdam all the power lines are buried- what foresight!).

Have been inside since yesterday and working from home today- actually was invited to a festival yesterday w a friend but canceled as it didn't feel safe with the gusts/ I would've fallen off my bike from the wind and didn't want to walk. And best I did- a woman died from a falling tree on my canal just a block over. Always scary when stuff like that hits so close to home.

[geonuc]

Holy FUCK it's windy out!

When the wind starts knocking huge trees down, it's too windy. That's just my personal opinion.

[FZR1KG]

75Mph?
Perfect Florida sailing weather!

[Rommie]

Fucking wet and windy out again- expecting similar levels this afternoon/evening of windy gusts, but probably not as many trees will be downed because a. the weak ones already went down less than 2 months ago, and b. no more leaves really ought to help things.

Working at home again today just because I don't cycle in this kinda bad weather and there's a good chance the trains will stop running at some point this afternoon and I don't want to test when that will be. Kinda a pity as today is the day Sinterklaas visits the Netherlands and I missed getting some fun in the department this morning, but so it goes.

[SciFiFisher]

Winter has officially arrived in Northern California. Sacramento is a strange but nice place to be if you don't like extreme cold. to the north only about 1 1/2 hours away they are recommending snow chains in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Meanwhile here it is a low of 30 F and highs today in the 50's. With clear sunny skies. Yesterday everyone was complaining about how cold it was and I was "what? It's not even coat weather yet".

Unfortunately, our cold snap is part of a bigger front that has brought some real winter weather to the mid-west. Looks like it's going to another winter of snow in parts of the country. Thumper should be busy this year.

[Rommie]

Well good thing I was home- just saved a window from blowing in that wasn't latched properly, during the giant gust of hail part of the storm. Yikes!

[FZR1KG]

Been warm here but that's about to change. Snow coming in a couple of days.
Speaking of weather, we now have HF weather fax operational.
Just using a small portable SW receiver and a special USP sound card designed for HF reception and transmission for digital data over the SW bands.

[pumpkinpi]

That's F.

[FZR1KG]

That's F.

Fox?