That Fall-like weather that much of the east coast is feeling was ushered into Maryland last night. The cold front triggered a nice lightning show across much of the area.
Cloud-to-Ground lightning strikes last night
I was able to catch some video of the lightning. I didn’t have the best vantage point, but you get to see some of the intense strikes near Germantown.
Many of you know I work for WeatherBug as a meteorologist for the Media department. WeatherBug has established weather stations at schools, businesses, and emergency management buildings. One of the main benefits to meteorologists in using WeatherBug data compared to National Weather Service (NWS) data is our data is real-time, updating every two seconds. The NWS data could be up to an hour old and they don’t have as dense a network as WeatherBug.
As you may imagine, explaining to viewers what is happening (“nowcasting”) is difficult with data that could be old. With WeatherBug data, our partners are able to go into the neighborhoods where people live to show the conditions as the weather changes.
This afternoon around 4:00pm, the NWS site at Washington-Dulles (KIAD) reported 0.43″ of rain, which is indicative of the weather for the airport. However, localized thunderstorms only seven miles away dumped over 5″ of rain (now at 6.07″) at one of our WeatherBug sites in Reston, VA. I was able to follow the radar and actually see the rain amounts increase as it was happening. Meteorologists, with this real-time data, are able to warn viewers faster than with the NWS data alone. In Reston, there were many reports of flash flooding and even some water rescues of motorists who got stranded in high water.
The rain will slow tonight and mostly end by the weekend, but the damage has been done. WeatherBug sites up and down the east coast, already water-logged by Irene, have seen record flood stages. Wilkes-Barre, PA evacuated 65,000 residents after river levels were forecast to reach just below record flood stages (set during Hurricane Agnes in 1972). Unfortunately, we’ll be talking about this flooding for the next several days and weeks to come.
I was 19 when Hurricane Katrina hit. It was one of the first days of class my sophomore year at Western Connecticut. I can remember looking at radar images and models leading up to landfall and being utterly amazed and anxious at where the landfall would be.
Hurricane Katrina
Katrina was a strong category 3 storm when it made landfall on Aug 29, 2005 in Louisiana. Days prior, Katrina broke the record for strongest hurricane ever record with a 902mb central pressure (later broken by Hurricane Rita) and 175mph sustained winds.
Katrina made one more landfall before approaching the Mississippi/Louisiana boarder. It is here that the most devastating damage was done in Mississippi. Complete towns washed off the map; only leaving concrete slabs and bricks where houses and stairs used to be.
Of course, in the preceding days, the plight of New Orleans dominated news coverage. Mississippi had been pushed on the backburner, though suffer the worst that Katrina had to offer.
Through the Newman Center at Western Connecticut State University, I had the opportunity to travel to Mississippi on the Journey of Hope six months after Katrina hit to help the Biloxi area rebuild. I can’t begin to describe the damage.
There aren’t too many events that shape ones’ life, but Katrina did that for me. I wasn’t directly affected by the disaster but I was affected, in a positive way, with those who I helped.
I still keep in touch with a few of the people I helped that week (and during two later trips). Billy Ray Dedeaux is one of my good friends I talk to on facebook. I hope to make a trip soon to visit everyone.
Billy Ray Dedeaux and Me
One of the lessons I learned from these experiences is not to be so concerned with the material goods in my life. Every person I spoke to was just happy to be alive and wasn’t worried about the car they lost or the clothes that got ruined. They had each other and that’s all that mattered.
Six years after Katrina, I know I’m a better person for having met the amazing people of Mississippi. Sometimes there is good out of a disaster.
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Check out my Journey of Hope pages for more stories on my Katrina experience.
At Irene’s closest, it got within 15 miles or so of Ocean City around 2:30am. This put us right on the outside edge of the eye wall. Yes I was awake.
Irene's eye wall right off the coast
Hurricane Irene didn’t disappoint; both in Ocean City and in New England. I was asked yesterday on KVUE if I thought the damage in Ocean City fit the expectations that we had been forecasting. Yes, mainly because we didn’t expect devastating damage. (View the entire interview here).
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