This one that went through from Chicago to the Mid-Atlantic?
My GF has been in Scotland the last 2 weeks and of course yesterday is when she was flying back. The last leg of her trip was a quick jump from New York to DC, and of course it’s scheduled to leave JFK at 10 and come into National at 11, which is exactly when the storm was going to hit the area and I had to go pick her up.
I had been tracking her flights online all day, and while the reports were saying that National was delaying all incoming flights, after a 40 minute delay, the flight tracker showed her plane was in the air, so I get in the car and start toward the airport. The storm has not yet hit the area when I start out, but I’m in Takoma Park, MD and National is exactly on the opposite side of the city, so there’s really no good way to get there except to drive all the way through DC.
As soon as I get onto Georgia Ave, the wind starts blowing crazy hard, there’s small branches and other detritus flying around, and soon after the rain starts coming-- I can’t exactly describe it as coming down so much as it was literally raining almost completely sideways, like 80-85 degrees sideways. A lot of the other drivers are pulling over to wait it out, but I’m like fuck it I’m going to get there and I just keep straight on going.
After about 35 minutes of working my way through the wind and rain, through massive puddles of standing water, and deftly dodging large branches and entire trees across the roads, I make it to airport. I park the car and head inside, to promptly find out-- her flight was redirected to Philadelphia and they’ll put her on another flight in-- of course they don’t know when. So I hit the only store that’s still open (Dunkin’ Donuts) and I wait… for three hours.
At just after 3AM she comes off a plane, tired and grouchy, and we have to drive home through the aftermath of the storm. What would normally take about 20 minutes at that time of night takes over an hour because once we got within about a mile of the house, all of the roads were closed because of flooded roads, and downed trees and power lines. Eventually I make a wide enough circle around all of the heavily wooded areas that we’re able to get home to a dark, hot house, and I’ve got to get up and go in to work in 3 hours…
…which brings us to right now, where I’m sitting comfortably in my nice air-conditioned office with full power and internet. Actually kind of happy to be here rather than at home right now.
Anyway, if you caught any of it, how did you fare in the storm?
We were at an outdoor concert.. The band (Brother Joscephus and the Love Revival Revolution) had just come out for their second set when all hell broke loose. We packed up our stuff and walked a couple blocks to the car in pouring rain.
The temp dropped from 95 degrees down to 70 very fast.
I’m in Maryland. There were lots of branches (some pretty large) down, and a trash can had been blown down the hill, but that’s about it. A whole lotta noise while it was going on last night, though, and I’ve heard it’s supposed to storm again later today.
When the storm hit, I was in bed with all the windows tightly closed. The wind and rain woke me up, but I went back to sleep pretty soon.
This morning I found my dsl Internet is out and my iPhone couldn’t find a signal. I wonder if the winds knocked down a cell tower.
On the way up to Tyson’s Corner on the bus I saw lots of debris and some huge branches down, and all the gas stations had huge lines of cars. It wasn’t till I got to the mall that I found out that half of northern VA has no power!
I had stopped in College Park, Maryland on the way home from work. I could have gone straight home and thus would have avoided the storm, but, no, I decided to pick up a copy of The Washington City Paper, which I always pick up because it has things like The Straight Dope in it. Just as I start to drive off from there, the storm hits. My car is slammed with winds and tree branches. I get to see an electric line being ripped down, which produces tremendous sparks. I found myself a place in a parking lot to sit in my car and waited out the storm.
We live in the weirdest little weather microcosm here in Ohio. I really would like a meteorologist tell me why this happens. Countless times I have watched the radar of a storm (thunderstorm or snow storm) approaching us as a solid mass only to have it split in two when it gets about 30 miles away, with a chunk going north and a chunk going south, and we get nuthin’. Such is was last night. We hardly even got rain.
My sister in WV is without power and water. I really feel for anyone who has to deal with this horrendous heat with no AC.
I am in northern VA. We lost power last night around 10pm and have yet to get it back. They say it may be a multi day outage. With temps in the 100s, its going to be one uncomfortable weekend.
I live in Annapolis and work at WUSA TV9. I had just finished a long day at the golf tournament and was chillin at he when it hit. Listening to the scanner I decided it needed my response. I jumped in my live truck and started covering damage in Annapolis, and provided a live phone report around 11:40.
Right now I am parked at 7th & A SE in DC. We will do a live special starting at 2:30p. We are where a large tree crushed a couple cars. Then another report at 6p.
I’m in St. Mary’s county, MD. Some time after I went to bed (shortly after 10) I heard really hard rain falling, but I just rolled over and went back to sleep. My husband said he woke up and thought he heard thunder. This morning, we saw a big ol’ tree across our neighbor’s covered race-car-haulin’ trailer - that might have been the “thunder” - and that neighbor works for the electric co-op, so he had to go to work instead of dealing with the tree. Poor guy.
We lost power about 11 today for maybe 2.5 hours - I assume it was storm-related, but maybe not. Anyway, we’re up and running now, so I’m good.
I live in the northern suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. I noticed it was getting dark at about 4:45, and I had to get something for dinner at a little store less than a mile from my house. When I left, the sky was dark and the winds were calm. I made it three blocks before all hell broke loose. It was barely raining, but the winds were so bad that branches and lawn furniture were blowing across my path. I decided to turn around and go home.
By the time I made it home, three of my next-door neighbor’s trees were down–one completely uprooted. Branches were everywhere, including a 10-foot one directly in front of our front door. The power was out, so I couldn’t get the garage door open, and my only house key is in a construction lockbox on my front door. I knew the code, but given the flying branches, I figured it was safer to just stay in my car. So I rode the storm out in my driveway, hoping all the trees in our wooded lot would remain upright. Thankfully, they did.
82-mph gusts were recorded during this storm. The estimate is 5-7 days without power. Thankfully, my in-laws never lost power, so we’re at their house for the foreseeable future.
It’s really interesting watching the golf tournament from Congressional CC today. There are trees down all over the place and they told the fans not to come. Tiger Woods just chipped in for a birdie from well off the green, and it was greeted with thundering…silence.
Power went out around 11:00-ish last night. When the lights went out (along with the precious AC), I told myself not to panic. After all, it was 110 degrees. It would be horrible to have to sleep through kind of heat. So the power just HAD to come back on if there was any fairness left in the world!
It returned around 7:00 this morning. Somehow I made it through the dark, hot-ass night.
Also in Northern Va and fortunate to not lose power, or internet. Although it did flicker a couple of times. This morning the neighborhood was strewn with downed trees and branches and debris. All over the place. Many friends are not so lucky.
PS- Tip to drivers: When the signal is out: STOP! Don’t go barreling through (as I saw several cars do at several intersections). When the signal at an intersection goes out it defaults to a 4-way stop. One at a time. Be safe.
I lost power last night around 10:30. The temps went up really quick in my house for some reason and I tossed and turned until the power came back around 1:30. Then the girls got me up at 6.
There wasn’t a whole lot of down branches or anything around here though. We went to see a movie this morning and it was packed as a lot of people didn’t have power. Our pool is still closed though.
I think I might drop the temps tonight so that if the power does go out it will stay cool a bit longer.
I live very near Cincinnati in SE Indiana and I have noticed this phenomenon quite often. Since I am in the car wash business, and we are utterly beholden to the weather, I watch a lot of weather radar. I’m not sure where you are in Ohio, but from what I have seen I suspect its the topography of the Ohio River Valley that breaks up the weather, especially with snow in the winter. I can’t tell you how many times in the winter I have seen a snow system rolling across Indianapolis 90 miles to my west, headed my way, only to have it either totally peter out before it gets here or do as you say, break apart and travel north and south of us in two “broken” pieces.
Couldn’t you have opened your garage door from the inside by pulling down on that disengagement thing that has that rope attached to it so you can open the door manually? I had to do that yesterday too as my power was out as well. And I must ask: why do you keep your only housekey in a lock box? I can see keeping a spare in there just in case, but why not have a copy on your key ring?
Anyway, here’s my tale of woe:
I just got back from a 10 day trip to Daytona Beach last Sunday. The day before leaving, I got into an embarrassing accident in my Mustang GT (Eleanor) with my neighbor across the street whereby we backed into each other without seeing one another. For a 5mph crash, the damage was pretty significant ($1500 worth).
I didn’t want to leave my baby to sit outside on the body shop’s lot for multiple days, so I opted to get it repaired when I returned from Florida. So I dropped the car off this past Monday, and they called me yesterday to let me know it was finished.
As I was driving the rental car to the body shop at about 4:45pm yesterday, I started noticing dark clouds ahoy. “Hmm”, I thought, “I did not know it was supposed to rain today.” It was 101 degrees outside at this point.
So I see thunderstorms are coming, which sucks because when the body shop called me they were like “we are spending about an hour detailing your car for you so it will be perfect”. Sweet…its gonna get ruined by rain (I don’t like to drive this particular car in the rain…for one it sucks ass traction wise on wet roads, and for two…I like to keep Eleanor really clean and rain on it means an hour of wiping down the thing for me).
As I am waiting for them to finish, suddenly these insane winds just start blowing out of literally nowhere. And they are strong. My car is ready so I drive the rental over to the side of the building where the garage door is to shield myself from the flying gravel bits and dust from the business next door…and I needed to unload some stuff from one car to the other.
My Mustang looks like shit already. Its covered in gravel dust. No big deal, I think. Can’t control the weather. So I get in the thing and start driving home on I-74. Near where I need to exit to get on 275 to head to Indiana, there’s a short bridge. A semi truck is in front of me. As it starts to cross the bridge, a HUGE gust of wind blasts through the opening where just before there had been lots of trees. I watch in horror as I see the right side of the trailer on the 18 wheeler rise up off the ground a good couple feet! I was thinking “Holy shit! This thing is going to roll over!”.
So I slow way down and right as I do, the truck manages to complete the bridge crossing and the trailer comes crashing back to Earth. Disaster avoided. I have never seen anything like that before.
I am listening to the radio as I get near my house and I hear that there’s a threat of large hail. Shit! My car just got painted! I gotta get this thing in the garage, stat! To this point it hadn’t really been raining much, but the winds were ridiculous. It reminded me of the wind storm from that hurricane that we had here in September of 2007. There were branches, leaves and all kinds of debris just all over the roads.
Just before the entrance to my subdivision, I am stopped at a light and a transformer blows…spectacularly. Right next to me. I have never seen that happen before either…it was like a Star Wars explosion…lots of white-hot balls of sparks showering the ground…I romped on it and got the hell away from there.
I get home, and now its POURING rain, and the wind hasn’t let up. And I have no power. I race inside to get the garage open so Eleanor doesn’t pull a Christine on me in my sleep, and so she’s safe.
Turns out that parts of my neighborhood have power (we have underground power lines), including our neighborhood’s local sports bar…so I get in my beater Hyundai and head over there for fish tacos, gin and a/c.
This was all from about 5-6 pm. At 6:30, the Sun was out again and the humidity returned. It went from 101 degrees to 71 in literally ten minutes. It was surreal, and bizarre.
My power still wasn’t on when I got home after 11pm, tired, a little buzzed and ready for bed. So I set my cellphone alarm as my regular one isn’t working. I needed to get up at 6am to go to work today. I woke up at 7:30 with a cat making muffins on my head…so I was late.
