Sunday was a sunny, much colder day as we headed down into the deep freeze once again. The Sunday maximum temperature from the VP2 (24.2°) was recorded at 1544 while the minimum temperature (14.4°) was recorded at 0738. My dew point temperatures stayed very low all day, ranging from 7° at 0351 down to 1° at 1045. Relative humidity values dropped significantly (69% – 36%). Barometric values rose a lot more on Sunday from a very early AM low of 30.53″ at 0000 up to a later-in-the-morning high of 30.73″ at 1013.

Remember now you can get the VP2 data on Weatherlink. You can access the data through http://www.weatherlink.com/user/walrusman444.

I am posting daily to weather underground. My ID is KMDROCKV200 and my station is called “Gardens of Traville.” Data is online, normally just about in real-time. I contribute daily to cocorahs as Rockville 2.8 WNW, Station ID MD-MG-115. Please remember that Weather Underground does not report snow data, and reflects what is recorded automatically through the tipping bucket VP2 gauge.

I talked on the phone with Marty and Ray about today’s football games and several interesting weather matters, including helping Ray order a weather station from Amazon that will be used mostly for his wind speed and direction, as his old system was no longer working right. 

We have clear skies now early on this Monday morning and still quite cold with temperatures in the mid teens at the present time. Martin Luther King Day Monday should be partly to mostly cloudy and not quite as cold, with highs in the low 30s and lows in the mid 20s. Cloudy on Tuesday with highs around 40°, lows in the low 20s, then partly cloudy and colder again on Wednesday, with highs in the upper 20s and lows in the upper teens, There is a chance for around an inch of snow late Tuesday into Wednesday but that remains “iffy” right now. Thursday and Friday should start warming up again, with highs in the low-mid 40s and lows in the low-mid 20s.

On the Channel 4 weather website at 0754 radar is showing light snow falling (but in some areas probably not hitting the ground) out in parts of the Midwest, through sections of MI, OH, IN, KY and WV at this time.
.
As of 0754, the data from the VP2 (coming from the ground radiation shield about 4 feet off the ground just under and out from the balcony) and the Lakewood WXBug station are as follows:

Clear, less breezy and cold this morning. The barometric pressure has fallen off some from yesterday’s lofty levels but is still quite high.

Station Relative Location Temp RH DP    BP    Wind   High/Low temp Sunday
VP2            Ground         15.4  71   8 30.64S   NA      24.2/14.4

There was no precipitation in the cocorahs gauge on Sunday. The VP2 tipping bucket rain gauge under my balcony also reported no precipitation on Sunday through midnight.

Early on Saturday morning I had rain and warm temps up in the 60s, then in the afternoon and evening temperatures plummeted well below freezing mark. I was just using the outer cylinder to catch the Saturday morning rain, and when I went to retrieve it, the water was frozen in it. I have a second gauge that I put in its place and brought the frozen catch inside. It took about 4 hours to melt so I had to delay posting my Saturday total till Sunday morning, but I found a curious ice “spike” that formed at the top of the “catch”. Please see today’s featured image I took of this frozen catch early Sunday morning – I posted this on the FB cocorahs page and Ric Werme gave me a great explanation and links for some great background and related information dealing with this “ice spike formation”. Noah Newman one of the head operatives at cocorahs headquarters in Colorado also corroborated this explanation on these “ice spikes”. 

“It’s called an ice spike, I think it is formed by ice growing in from the side of the cylinder until there’s a small hole that water is forced through as freezing continues. Ice spikes require clean water, at least in terms of dissolved salts. Apparently they’re pretty reliably made with distilled water, see http://www.snowcrystals.com/spikes/spikes.html

Check out the other pages there too, great site. Note especially the snow morphology diagram at http://www.snowcrystals.com/morphology/morphology.html “

I learned later that this formation has been known to form in rain gauges from rain gauge collections, if the rain gauge is clean and you got “clean precipitation” these spikes can easily form under the right conditions, particularly during a “flash freeze” situation such as happened at my location (and many others in the Eastern U.S.) where our temps dropped within hours into the teens after the rain finished. By the way, when the ice all melted there was 0.45″ of water in the bottom of the 4″ cylinder. 

January precipitation is 1.45″.
January snowfall is 0.5″.
Snow on ground 0
The seasonal snowfall total is 4.3″.

Year-to-date precipitation total is 1.45″

WX Bug Lakewood 4500 ft, 14 75 8 30.53″F NE 2 G ENE 9
                            140° from station                    23/11

The Lakewood rain gauge recorded no precipitation on Sunday. It is still reporting 1.29″ monthly and yearly January 2018 precipitation. I once again have no idea how it can total that much precipitation for the month/year.

Temp from the VP2 at 2400 was 17.3 RH 63% BP 30.67F DP 6.8. Clear and cold at 2400.

Good morning from the clear, cold, dry Walrus early on this Monday morning.