Crazy Weather

I can't tell if this made national news or just local headlines, but this weekend we had some pretty crazy weather that did quite a bit of damage.  Friday was forecasted to be in the upper 90s, with temperatures rising over 100 for both Saturday and Sunday.  Heat indexes with humidity were going to be closer to 110.  They weren't calling for a particularly high chance of storms any of the three days, so everyone though they'd just have to tough out the heat.  Caitlin and I got home after grabbing dinner downtown around 930 on Friday.  I walked the dog, and everything seemed fine.  We decided to try to watch the new Futurama on the DVR.  About 5 minutes into it the lights started to flicker a little.  The TV/DVR held together for a bit, but pretty soon we totally lost power.  

Not expecting storms, I thought perhaps it was a brown-out from all the AC, although thats extremely rare around here, particularly at night.  With the lights out though we quickly realized that the window was flashing pretty much continuously.  Caitlin heard things snapping.  It was pretty impressive.  Figuring it was just a regular storm and without power though, we went to bed.

When we woke up we still didn't have power, and a quick look outside showed that this wasn't a normal storm.  There were trees down everywhere.  My neighbor lost their fence, but fortunately their new deck appeared to have survived the impact.  When I walked the dog we had to basically forge our way through the woods and back because all of the paths were blocked.  I was able to drag a few things out of the way, but the full trees were too much.  When I got to the baseball field I realized how much wind there must have been.  Several large branches from trees had blown all the way to the middle of the baseball field, which is already offset from the trees.  A 50 lb branch blowing 200 feet through the air takes some power.

The prospect of facing 100+ weather without AC was a daunting one.  Worse, power was down everywhere, so most restaurants and other public places were closed.  I decided to bail out and drove out to the Casino in Charlestown where I figured they had generators and I could kill the day playing poker.  Caitlin drove to the mall/movie theater that did have power, but after an hour+ of trying to find a parking space, she gave up, and it took her another half hour to escape the traffic.  Fortunately our power came back early Saturday afternoon.  We were lucky.  One of the 5 people on my current project team only got it back this morning, so he stayed home to take care of things.  My mom still doesn't have power (she has been staying with us).


Prior to this weekend we'd actually had a very mild summer, with only a handful of days over 90 and relatively low humidity (Caitlin would argue otherwise, but she just doesn't have the perspective yet).  A clear indicator of the fact that its been mild has been the lack of pop-up thunderstorms that are usually a nightly occurrence this time of year.  I haven't had any problems with rain for baseball so far this summer, which is rare.  The storms materialize when hot and humid weather on the ground builds up instability in the atmosphere that ultimately triggers a short but powerful storm that blows itself out after 20-30 minutes.  This year though we've hardly had any of them.

Apparently this storm started as a pop-up storm in Chicago.  Only instead of blowing itself out, the conditions were just right for it to build on itself.  It started off building slowly, but as it gained energy the pressure differences started pulling it faster and faster, such that it eventually was flying at 60 mph across the country in a beeline from Chicago to DC, building energy the whole way and leaving a swath of destruction behind it.  It hit DC at its strongest before ultimately dissipating over the ocean.  Good times.  A time lapse of the radar -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0MG7aOjZciY