Washington DC Drowns In Epic Monday Flash Flood

The now famous phot of the person in the pink Oxford shirt
stranded atop a flooded ar in the Washington DC area
on Monday. 

I'm sure you heard on the news that Washington DC, and parts of Maryland and Virginia had quite a flash flood on Monday.

Lots of people got stranded in cars, and many of those had to be rescued the water came up so fast.

Rainfall rates were incredible. As WTOP explained:

"Reagan National Airport reported 3.3 inches of rain in an hour, including a half inch of rain in 11 minutes, on Monday morning. Between three and six inches of rain had fallen in Montgomery County by 11 a.m."

For perspective, 3.3 inches of rain is very roughly how much rain we should expect around here in Vermont during a full month.

WTOP goes on: "National Weather Service meteorologiset Cody Ledbetter said the storm dumped about 6.3 inches of rain near Frederick, Maryland, about 4.5 inches near Arlington, Virginia."

Driving into flooded roads is a big no-no. But many people got trapped because they set off for their morning commute before it started raining, then became trapped as the downpours hit and water started rising around their cars.

The National Weather Service declared a flash flood emergency, which is meant to (rightly) scare people into getting serious about taking precautions, like staying put and not driving if you were in a safe place that wasn't flooding.

It seemed no place was completely safe. Water even seeped into the White House basement.

As meteorologist Marshall Shepherd noted in Forbes, something called precipitable water was at sky high levels in the DC area Monday morning. It's complicated, but precipitable water is one way of measuring how hard it can potentially rain in a given area.

Precipitable water in the atmosphere was at near record highs at the time of the storms, so all you needed was a trigger to unleash incredible downpours. A weak trough of low pressure in the area did the trick.

You always have to be nervous when they say precipitable water levels are at the highest 1 percent possible. This often leads to flash floods.

Now, climate scientists will tell us that these big flash flood events like the one yesterday are becoming more common as global warming takes hold. Warmer air can hold more water, increasing the chances of flooding downpours.

All this is true. But I think it's impossible to say whether the flood in DC, Maryland and Virginia Monday has a direct line to climate change. Floods like these have always happened, so it could be just chance that this happened. Whether climate change influenced this is right now, anybody's guess.

Of course there's videos.

Here's a compilation of images and clips from NBC:



Here's a clip from the Washington Post. I especially like the sudden waterfalls in the Metro station and in somebody's back yard:



This is, or was, Baker Park in Frederick, Maryland:

Video: Tornado Hits Ambulance

This tornado is barely visible through the rain, but it was rated an EF3
with winds of 159 mph or so. It hit last week in Franklin
County, Virginia. Video in this post shows an ambulance
being hit by the twister

There were a number of tornadoes in the Southeast last Friday.  As is often the case especially with twisters in the East, this one was wrapped in rain, nearly impossible to see.

Until it is too late.

Such was the case when two paramedics in an ambulance encountered an EF-3 tornado in Franklin County, Virginia. You can see in the video below how quickly things escalated.

The back window of the ambulance blew out, filling the vehicle with debris. Thankfully, the paramedics weren't hurt. There wasn't any patients in the ambulance at the time.

The ambulance was obviously knocked out of commission, but the pair did rescue another motorist who had gotten caught in the twister. Another ambulance came, got tht guy to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Here's the video:

Last Slap Of Florence Hits Hard; Fire Tornado Sucks Up Hose, Melts It

One of the damaging tornadoes in Virginia Monday,
part of the remains of Florence

The remains of Hurricane Florence still had quite a punch Monday, unleashing tornadoes on Virginia that killed at least one person.  

Dramatic video at the bottom of this post shows it ripping roofs off buildings and flinging the debris high into the air.

A flooring company warehouse collapsed on workers during the tornado in Chesterfield County, Virginia, killing one employee and injuring another. This brought the overall death toll from Florence so far to 32.

The very last gasp, or what we think is the last gasp, is in southern New England this morning, prompting flash flood warnings in southern New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts  flood advisories in far southern Vermont, and flood warnings in parts of New York.

The rain avoided parched northern Vermont, and only scattered light showers might fall today as a couple of cold fronts come through. Nothing heavy. but the unseasonably hot, humid weather is ending and we will get into a spell of cool autumn weather, with the exception of a brief warmup Friday.

It has stopped raining in North Carolina, but the flooding on some rivers is only just peaking, and it will take many days for all of them to recede so cleanup can start.

FIRE WHIRL SUCKS UP HOSE

A viral video making the rounds shows a "a fire tornado" during an August 19 wild fire in British Columbia sucking a fire hose up into the air. This video is also at the bottom of this post.

Firefighter M,C. Schidowsky wrote on Instagram: "Fire tornado destroyed our line. It threw burning logs across our guard for 45 minutes and pulled our hose 100 plus feet in the air before melting it. That's definitely a first."

Seems like fire tornadoes are now a thing, give the history with that one in California earlier this year that destroyed homes around Redding, California.

First, here's the tornado video from Virginia, after that will be the fire tornado/hose video.



Here's the fire tornado grabbing the hose:

As Expected, A Chilly Vermont Summer Morning, And Those Floods Just Keep Coming

A large rose bush enjoys wall to wall sunshine on the longest day
of the year, the Summer Solstice yesterday in Burlington, Vermont. 

It was great to have a Summer Solstice, as we did Thursday that was wall-to-wall clear skies and sunshine here in Vermont. That's certainly not something that happens every year.

And here's the weirder thing. I was out late working in the yard because visibility stayed great past 9 p.m. I finally went inside, not because it was too dark but because I was getting too cold. Ahh, summer in Vermont.

There were reports of readings of 33 and 34 degrees up in the Northeast Kingdom this morning. Similar readings were reported in northern New Hampshire. It was 30 degrees over in Saranac Lake, New York, so they had another June frost over there. They just had one last week, too.

It will warm up today, and after a showery, coolish weekend, and a somewhat cool start to the week, things will get warmer and more humid by the second half of the upcoming week. There are even some signs we could get a strong heat wave somewhere around the week of July 4.

Elsewhere in the nation, the floods I've been speaking of go on and on. They're never that widespread, but they are intense.

Flooding at the Richmond, Virginia airport
this morning. 

The latest victim was Richmond, Virginia, where more than seven inches of rain came down early this morning. A whopping 4.55 inches of that rain come in just one hour --- that's incredible. The rainfall rate at one point was five inches per hour.

As you might imagine, the flooding in and around Richmond is severe. The Richmond International Airport was closed this morning because swaths of the airfield, the parking lots and the roads leading to the airport were under water. Parts of Interstate 64 were also closed for a time.

Areas further north in Virginia, including Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, also had significant flooding. This is Charlottesville's second nasty flood within a month.

By the way, this will be the second consecutive month in Richmond with over ten inches of rain. That's also completely off the charts.

Meanwhile, coastal Texas is still trying to recover from flooding this week. Port Aransas, devastated by Hurricane Harvey last year, drowned under 15 inches of rain from the tropical downpours this week.

Flood warnings were widespread this morning in southeastern South Dakota, northwestern Iowa and southwestern Minnesota after three to eight inches of rain this week.

Today, further flash flooding is a fairly good bet from the Mid-Atlantic states to the Ohio Valley. The threat spreads back to parts of the Plains over the weekend.

We have more videos:

McAllen, Texas, ground zero for the national crisis over immigrant children separated from parents, is also dealing with very severe flooding:



Earlier this week, there was some destructive flooding in and near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here's the scene in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania:

Wild Weather Videos From A Wild Weather Week

Huge crashing waves caused by hight winds
froze onto this lamp post on the shores
of Lake Superior.

More videos are coming in -- in dribs and drabs - of some wild moments in the past week's wild weather in North America.

That's the nice thing about technology these days: Everybody's got a camera.

You've already seen some videos that got our attention in prior posts, but here's a few more.

The first involves a family in Danville, Virginia on Sunday who were audably worried as they drove in stormy weather amid tornado warnings.

Then all hell breaks loose. Spoiler: They're OK, and theywent on to check on others in the damaged area (it wasn't that big a tornado, it looks like.) And they check out some of the damage.

Totally worth the watch:



Up in Toronto, Canada, they had an ice storm this week with the big storm. Watch this video of a dog in danger. (Another spoiler: She's fine) The dog was in the back yard, and was startled by what must have been a loud cracking noise.

Frightened, the dog ran to the back deck. Good thing, as you'll find out:



In that same Canadian ice storm this week, a hungry raccoon braved ice and strong winds to get at a bird feeder. It didn't go well. Love the kids indoors laughing at the little critter:



The storm caused a blizzard in the Midwest, and of course high winds were widespread. Check out this beautiful video of huge waves crashing ashore on Lake Superior. Notice how water was freezing on the shore. Remember this is a lake, albeit a big one, not the ocean:



The storm caused very heavy rain in New York City and surrounding areas on Monday. Nearly three inches of rain deluged Manhattan. It turned out not to be a good day to take the subway, as flash flooding caused scenes like this:

After Rain And Flash Freeze, We Can Relate To This Guy

A coupel stills from a Virginia man's epic slip and slide

For the past week, this video has been making the rounds, truly a viral one.

The security camera footage shows a guy setting off to go to work in the morning. Looks like he's headed toward his vehicle to start the daily commute.

But it's been chilly, and there's been a bit of freezing rain. Enough, apparently, to make the start of his day unhappy.

The man's wife, Kelly Bonser Besecker, spotted the video on their home security camera system in Virginia, and just had to post it on Facebook. The rest, as they say, is viral video history.

As of last Friday, the Facebook video had been viewed 52 million times with 1.2 million shares.

Besecker reports her husband, Tim Besecker, is uninjured, at least physically. He told the Washington Post that this is not his first spill, but it was, apparently, his most dramatic.

He also told the Washington Post that, with another spell of cold, possibly icy weather in the forecast, he's going to be more generous when he spreads the rock salt. Here's the video:

Pics, Video From Saturday's Severe Weather

Ominous storm in Edgar Springs, Missouri Saturday. 

As expected, a wide swath of the nation from Texas to Virginia were blasted by severe weather Saturday.

This  including a few tornadoes (though fortunately not that many), but the day especially featured strong winds, giant hail and flash floods.

There was an incredibly 386 reports of strong, damaging winds and nearly 300 reports of large hail, according to NOAA's Storm Prediction Center. 

Hail a little bit bigger than softballs pummeled Adrian, Missouri.

Hail bigger than baseballs in Adrian, Missouri Saturday.

The severe weather went as far east as near Richmond, Virginia, where hail as big as hens eggs punched through car windows and damaged homes in the area.

Severe weather is still expected in a stripe from Texas to Mississippi, and in much of the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic states, though it might not be quite as widespread as Saturday.

As bad as Saturday was, it could have been worse, given the extreme instability in the atmosphere across parts of Oklahoma, Missouri and Arkansas.

The instability - the potential for explosive severe storms, was pretty much near record territory.

By the way, a few thunderstorms will probably break out in our neck of the woods in Vermont Tuersday, and a couple of them might be strong. However, I don't expecdt a super big widespread severe outbreak in the Green Mountain State.

Here's a video of some big hail pummeling cars amid some sunshine in Glen Allen, Virginia on Saturday:

Wild Dust Devil Stops A Softball Game. For A Minute

A large dust devil scored a home run during
a college softball game in Virginia last Saturday.  

A viral video is circulating now that shows the highlight of a college womens softball game last Saturday between the Lynchburg Hornets and Bridgewater Eagles in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The video is at the bottom of this post.

The star of the game turned out to be a large dust devil. 

Everybody seems incredibly nonchalant as the huge dust devil passes over the infield. The umpire stopped play until the dust devil settled down. Within a minute, though, it was game on!

Dust devils usually hit on nice, sunny days, like the weather Lynchburg was experiencing Saturday.

The sun heats up air near the ground, and that warm air rises into cooler air up above.  More warm air near the surface flows into the spot where the original warm air rose, that air rises, and you get sort of a chimney effect.

Then, wind blowing horizontally into this chimney gets it spinning, and a dust devil forms.

Dust devils rarely hurt anybody or cause damage, though a few of the very strongest ones can get destructive.

Like most dust devils, the one at the Lynchburg softball game caused no harm. It was just kinda fun.

Watch:

Virginia Tornado Targeted People With Nowhere To Hide

Overturned campers after a tornado in
Virginia Thursday morning.  

That tornado that hit a Virginia campground Thursday morning demonstrates what can happen when a twister, even one that's not that strong, targets an area where there's nowhere to hide.

Two people died and 36 were injured when the tornado hit the campground. There were more than 1,300 people in the heavily forested area at the time.

The tornado was rated an EF-1, with winds of about 100 mph. So it was a dangerous tornado, but not the strongest you can get. Most people weather EF-1 tornadoes just fine if they are in a well constructed house and hide in the basement or interior room during the storm.

But people at the campground had no sturdy structures to go to.  They were basically sitting ducks.

And it was hard to spread the word that a tornado was coming. Not everybody had TVs or weather radios to warn them.

The National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for the area about  10 to 20 minutes before the campground was hit.

It's also rare for supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes to form during the early to mid morning, as this one did, notes the Capital Weather Gang.    Most occur in the afternoon and evening, so this was rather unexpected.

There was a rare confluence of instability and jet stream energy that prompted this morning tornado.

It also didn't help that even parts of the campground that didn't get the tornado had straight line winds of up to 70 mph and hail between the sizes of golf and baseballs. That caused added destruction to the flimsy campers and added to the danger faced by the people inside them.

The wind, mostly from the tornado but also the straight line winds,  easily tipped over campers and felled trees on tents. The two people who died were a married couple from New Jersey in a tent when a tree fell on them. Their 13 year old son was badly injured in a nearby tent when a tree fell on him.

Here's a terrifying view from inside one of the campers




Here's a CBS news video of the tornado's aftermath:

Cool Photos Show Effects Of This Year's Delayed Early Spring

Via Twitter, I found these two photos taken two years apart in the same spot in Richmond, Virginia.  

The two pics, by William T. Hark of harkphoto.com shows a street scene on March 28, 2012, after one of the warmest early springs on record.

The same spot, exactly two years later after one of the coldest early springs on record, shows things are far behind that of two years ago.

As always, click on the images to make them bigger and easier to see.

Hark, the photographer, usually concentrates on storm, tornado, wildlife and butterfly photography, but this is an interesting snapshot of how two springs can be totally different from one another.

(By the way, it's worth checking out Hark's work. Excellent images for all you nature and weather geeks out there.)

April so far has seen temperatures much closer to average along the East Coast, so spring is now progressing nicely.

The cherry blossoms in Washington DC should be nearing their peak soon, and even in my icy cold location way up in northern Vermont, most of the snow has finally melted off my yard.

And are those green shoots coming up in warm, sunny corners?  Bring it on!