Another day of slow moving thunderstorms

There appears to be no significant severe threat with these slow moving storms. I have to wonder, since I didn't watch them overnight, if this is the same cluster, that just finally moved that far south. I did drizzle here this morning, and now the storms seem to be intensifying with the afternoon heat. Not sure if I'll be going out to follow, get lightning shots or not. I will be keeping an eye on the radar however.

Night-time surprise

Was out walking this evening for a little exercise, when I saw a flash or two of lightning. I figure we'd get a small shower here and there. After I came in, and waited for the The Weather Channel to show what was going on, got impatient with their programming, so I ran upstairs, and check the radar on the internet. I was impressed with the radar loop. A growing convective storm with a sizable diameter, especially for this late hour (10pm). A radar capture is show above. Nothing real impressive to get excited about, but the storm seems to generally be stationary, so NWS is calling for 3-5 inches in very, very localized area (around the City of Frederick). Some hail has also been reported with this storm. I'm in the next county down, and not likely to see anything for a little bit, if at all.

New format coming for Blog

After talking with Jeff Gammons (Weathervine.com) I am going to attempt to redo the Blog so that instead of being hosted by blogger.com, it'll be on my site/web server.

I'll have more flexibility and use, plus it gets me better results with the search engines. No point of having a blog if no one is reading it.

It may be a few weeks, because it isn't the easiest task for me. Learning PHP and MySQL is new to me and hence I don't exactly know how long it'll take before it's up and running. Feel free to check the progress however, as the link will be:

http://www.weatherwarrior.net/blog

Bill Proenza Congressional Committee Hearings

I got a chance to watch some of the Committee hearings involving the dismissal of Bill Proenza as director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC, aka Tropical Prediction Center). I personally am not for or against the move (at the moment) since I'm not party to all the facts, or affected directly by it. However, I have been following the events recently and entertain any discussion on the topic.

Here's link on the news story
Sun Sentinel . com

SPC not they key

Friday was the perfect example of why not to chase based on the Storm Prediction Center. Chasers have learned to do their own forecasts many times because simply chasing based on Convective Outlooks (Risk areas) is not productive.

Friday's 5% tornado risk area yielded only a handful of storms within the 5% bubble. There was a tornado up along the New York and Connecticut border (in Hurds Corner, Litchfield County, Connecticut).

In this area, all the action was south of DC and only managed a little bit of wind damage. I don't even know how the storm structure looked, although the radar wasn't too impressive when I did manage to sneak a peek.

I'll be waiting for the next storm, hopefully without and interrupting deadlines.

Of all days!!

Of all days that I have to have a major deadline at work, and will be at work for 12 to 15 hours so that project is ready to go to the county permit office.

There is a slight risk with a 5% tornado risk from the DC area northward. Pennsylvania will likely see most of the action, but most areas in and around the 5% area will see good supercell storms. Northern Maryland is also my favored area to chase storms since it is not as populated as the DC region. I like to drive upto Interstate 70 in Frederick or Howard County and let the storms come to me, and from there follow them westward. Montgomery County is just too crowded, and too difficult to chase in. It's OK, if you go to a spot and watch a storm go by, but not to chase.

I'll likely try to sneek out while in Bethesda at my office to get some lightning shots, but who knows what will happen in the narrow views I have from that location.

Now we're back in the swing

Finally picked-up a new professional camera. A Canon Rebel XT digital SLR. Took the first picture with it today of the wonderful Sunset shown above.

Also, we're getting back into the Media production and weather oriented business. I've been heavily focused on health issues and my architecture work as of late. But with a little over a month till the height of hurricane season, I'm getting more and more excited about severe weather.

(The picture today is a Sunset shot taken from the Montgomery Airpark, in Gaithersburg, Maryland).