Washington D.C. Metblogs » Weather

Daily DC Item: In Which Weather.com Tells Me To Take Cover

Patrick — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:30:35 +0000

Yesterday I was on weather.com to check this weekend’s weather and while it looks like it’ll be a little wet, I was amused by the suggested links with the forecast:

Are you prepared for today’s hurricane? Maybe they are referring to the storm that is Barack Obama.

Watermain Break in Bullet Points

tonigm — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:45:37 +0000

If you have to have a huge underground pipe break in your neighborhood, a warm spring morning is not the worst day for it. If you live below grade, it’s still pretty traumatic.
I didn’t know pavement could do that.
The overall response from the City workers was great; the sad thing is that they’ve done this so often that they have it all down pat. I wanted to kiss them for working through the 4-hour downpour that evening that I’m sure kept it from getting any worse.
The contractors were out in force; we had 3 business cards for specialists in water damage in our mail slot within 8 hours.
Now I know what rush hour sounds like without traffic on Florida Avenue. And that articulated Metro buses can back up very, very long distances.
Life goes back to normal pretty quickly, all things considered. Until the next one breaks…

Didn’t It Snow This Week?

Patrick — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:12:17 +0000

Remember Monday? You know that day we were either happy to not have school, or somewhat cranky that we only had a two-hour delay at work. Ya that day it snowed… a lot. Now all of a sudden it’s 70 and wonderful outside. I went out to the Natural History Museum with friends and I just walked all over downtown without a coat on. That was only a week after I was bundled up trying to scrap ice off my car.

While it may have been nice this weekend, it looks like the weather is going to get cooler as we get back to work tomorrow. It won’t get back up to 70’s but it will stay above freezing at least.

That’s what I love about DC, we get a winter but it doesn’t stay too long for us to hate it.

Anybody else do anything interesting with the warm weather out?

Quick and Dirty Weatherization

tonigm — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:03:08 +0000

Antarctica on 12 Jan 08, courtesy of MODIS

Okay, it’s cold. Not quite Antarctica, but I turned a corner this morning and I swear it felt like it.

While it’s too late to take advantage of the Weatherization Assistance Program, here are some quick and dirty tips for staying warmer at home.

Find the one or two worst leaks and plug them. The best way to figure out where the cold air is getting in is to do a walk around your house holding a tissue draped over a wire hanger. You can tack up a blanket or plastic sheet during the cold snap, or roll up a towel against the door gap.
Optimize the fuel you’re using for heat. In general, you want to use more liquid fuel (natural gas, kerosene) and less electricity (baseboard heaters), and really, wood in the fireplace is not really for heat. (Though wood is a lot better than storebought wax-and-sawdust logs, which are only for the pretteh.) Whichever you choose, remember that convection (ie, a fan) can triplify the results.
Clean the dust of out intake and blower vent louvers. This is a quick way to make your furnace work less hard. Also, run a vacuum cleaner over your furnace filter. Closing doors and covering some vents can also decrease the load on the furnace.
Put on a sweater. You know that mom was right. Put on some warm socks, too. (I myself have been known to wear fingerless gloves when working on the computer.)

Finally, I recommend making soup — face it, going out to eat over the next few days is going to be traumatic. A nice pot of hot soup on the stove can warm you inside and out.

Stay warm, DC!

Don’t Drive Drunk

wkhang — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:35:47 +0000

Don’t drink and drive also please wear your seat belt.

December is the most dangerous month when most of people get killed or life time injured by accidents.

I do not care where ever you go, when ever you go, we all know time location and our work all is important but think.

Is your life is not important ???

Your children are also important…

When you are at the driving seat, you are responsible of all people who are sitting with you, so tell them WEAR YOUR SEAT BELT OR GET OFF FROM THE CAR !!!!

Read and watch this heart breaking story:
http://deniseeckert.myadventures.org/index.asp?nMonth=4&nYear=2007

Must View:

http://hub.metblogs.com/video/video/show?id=2188078%3AVideo%3A7805

http://hub.metblogs.com/video/road-accident

If I can wear it than why cant you ?

Seat Belt Picture by WK

Lose Child in the car, this could be her last trip, she was making face when I took her picture, so cute to lose…

Lose Child - Picture by WK

Can you feal the pain ?

Injured in Car Accident - Picture from Flickr

Drive Slow in Winter.

Picture from Flickr

This could be your future house for the life time, so the choise is yours, do you want to wear the seatbelt and drive safe or this bed is waiting for you.

Picture from Flickr

Bad Weather: Bring Your Gamp

tonigm — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:06:26 +0000

Summer official ended this morning at about 3 am. Leaves have been falling steadily all day, the wind is chill, and the air is damp. The weekend looks to be perfect for outdoor activities, but don’t forget your “gamp” next week!

gamp (a word that I heard today that I am compelled to share with you)
n. – A large umbrella, a reference to Mrs. Sally Gamp, who always carried a large umbrella in Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit.

Tents Collapse on Mall, Injure Those Seeking Shelter

Tom Bridge — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:05:10 +0000

If you’ve driven up 14th St near the Mall this week, you’ve seen all the tents on The Mall. They’re part of the soon-to-happen Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Today, they were needed as shelter as a major league thunderstorm rolled through the District of Columbia. From where I was in Clarendon, they looked an awful lot like a hurricane or an apocalypse, not like a heavy weather system. Breaking News On is reporting that those tents have collapsed, injuring a number of people caught beneath them during the storm. NBC4 is reporting that no one was critically injured in the storm.

Dominion Power is reporting close to 100,000 are without power currently.

I got home this afternoon shortly after the worst of the storm had hit, and there were several large tree branches down, and this oak tree, snapped in half is just a block over.

The most likely timing for storms will between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Don — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:30:30 +0000

That’s the word from Capital Weather, talking about today’s severe weather that we’re being warned about by NOAA. Most probable at 45% is damaging winds with hail being less likely at 30%. Tornadoes only get a 2% shot but I still wouldn’t do my kite-flying today.

Here’s hoping this is just an anomaly early in the season, but CW points out that normally there’s 1 or 2 of these NOAA warnings a year and at June’s midpoint we’ve had 4 so far now. Yuck. It’s moving west to east, so you might see it sooner or later than the 3 to 8 window depending on where you are in the area. Be careful out there.

Washington DC storm, courtesy of ™bluhousworker

Still there?

Don — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:21:35 +0000

Hopefully you haven’t all washed away in the heavy weather. I saw Tom twitter that he could hear hail but I didn’t hear anything other than a hard rain at my house. It came and went here even quicker than the sudden downpour that showed up Saturday night mere moments before we walked out of the stadium. I’m happy to say we managed to stay under cover both times, though I did brave last night’s initial sprinkles in order to do some grilling.

Go Away Summer

Max — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:18:31 +0000

Is it seriously summer already? Hold on, let me Google that. Oh hey! It’s not.

Could have fooled me though. This is August weather. In June. What kind of cruel joke is Mother Nature trying to play on us?

This reminds me of the weather we had in ‘Nam during the war. I remember it like it was yesterday. The swift boat dropped John Kerry and I off on the banks of the Poo Nahnee river and we had to cut our way through the humidity with our machetes. We had to tie rolls of Bounty to our heads to mop up the constant stream of sweat. We got heat stroke so many times that our reality was more like a dreamworld than our dreamworld was. Hah – one time when we were crossing the Moo Goo Gai Pan river under sniper fire, John tried to windsurf across on a crocodile. Silly ivy leaguer. I came to his rescue and beat the bajeezus out of that croc with the butt of my gun, but lost it along with three fingers and a buttock in the process. I had to retrofit a potato gun I’d bought at Wall Drug on a family vacation into a tofu gun. Now you know why I’ll never be a vegan.

I’ve had enough already! I want my dry, 75 degree days back. I want to be able to open my windows at night. I don’t want to have to take three showers every day. I don’t want to have to run my air conditioner around the clock. I don’t want my jeans to stick to me when I go out at night.

Go away, Summer.