Thursday featured partly to mostly cloudy skies, cold temperatures in the early AM but milder PM temps and windy conditions at times. We did warm into the upper 40s for highs with early AM mins running in the upper 20s. Temperatures are approaching the freezing mark very early this Friday morning, with winds lessening overnight. The Thursday maximum temperature from the VP2 (48.7°) was recorded at 1500 while the minimum temperature (29.1°) was recorded at 0721. Dew point temperatures were a bit higher than yesterday, ranging from a low of 18° at 0000 up to a high of 27° at 1450. Relative humidity values were lower today (65% – 37%). Barometric values lowered some more today, ranging from an early high of 29.87″ at 0008 down to a low of 29.64″ later at 1457.

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 am still trying to work on entering my February data into the master 2018 spreadsheet, but didn’t get around to doing much with it today with the other things I was doing. I still expect to finish it sometime this week. I continue to have to deal with problems with sending out email through gmail and verizon through Thunderbird, as the outgoing SMTP mail server keeps timing out. Resetting Thunderbird and then if that fails rebooting (warm and cold) seems to be the only real working solution. I tried to do a bit of science fair email correspondence, but due to the aforementioned problem I was held back on making much progress on that activity. I also continued to work on my busy social calendar for this St Patrick’s Day weekend. I also helped a bit to coordinate the arrival of Ray’s weather station on Thursday afternoon (along with Marty helping also). He got it finally, and had it up and running beautifully within a few minutes upon receipt of the station.  I had some prune juice and spicy low-sodium V8 juice along with my vitamins, supplements and ice water later on.

It was mostly clear and cold in the early AM on Thursday with low temps in the upper 20s, then rose more on southerly winds to mid-afternoon highs into the upper 40s, with continued blustery conditions and lots of broken clouds that built up enough to overcast conditions of cumulus and stratocumulus in time for my 1510 GLOBE cloud observation. (See my featured image sent into GLOBE that looks north out of my balcony – the 1500 METAR at KGAI today showed a base of about 5500 feet for these clouds. Also it looks like a bit of virga in spots in this photo).

Overnight Thursday into Friday was clear and cold, with winds dropping off quite a bit and temps falling to the lower 30s an hour before sunrise. Friday looks to be partly cloudy and colder once again, with highs in the low 40s and lows in the mid 20s. St Patrick’s Day Saturday looks to be warming up a bit under partly to mostly cloudy skies, with high temps in the mid 40s, and a 40 POP for PM showers with lows falling down into the mid 20s once again. Sunday should warm up some more, with highs in the low 50s and lows around 30° under sunny skies. Monday should be mostly sunny with temps around 50° for highs and around 30° for lows. On Tuesday incredulously temps should only max out in the mid 30s for highs, lows in the upper 20s, and a 90 POP for rain or snow – type of precipitation will be better determined as the time draws much nearer to Tuesday. Normal high temps now are in the mid 50s and normal lows are in the low-mid 30s. We have not had an above normal day since the end of February. The cherry blossoms downtown were looking at that time to be coming out by about now, but with these persistent cold March temps we have been having the peak bloom for the cherry blossoms doesn’t look to occur till early April, as there doesn’t appear to be any significantly warmer temps from now through the end of the month.

On the Channel 4 weather website at 0652 radar is showing scattered areas of snow showers once again in the mountains to my W and NW in parts of PA, WV, western Maryland, and NY at this time.

As of 0652, 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, cold and dry.

Station Relative Location Temp RH DP    BP     Wind High/Low temp Thursday
VP2            Ground          32.7 61  20 29.82R   NA    48.7/29.1

The total precipitation in the cocorahs gauge was 0.00″ through midnight Thursday. The VP2 tipping bucket rain gauge under my balcony had 0.00″ through midnight Thursday.

Thursday’s precipitation was 0.00″
March precipitation is 0.44″.
Thursday’s snowfall 0.0″
March snowfall 0.3″
Snow on ground 0 (reported to the nearest half-inch)
The seasonal snowfall total is 7.8″.
Year-to-date precipitation total is 7.07″

WX Bug Lakewood 4500 ft, 30 56 17 29.78″R NW 2 G NW 9
                            140° from station                  48/25

The Lakewood rain gauge recorded 0.00″ of precipitation on Thursday. It is reporting a total of 0.98″ of precipitation so far in March and a 2018 year-to-date (YTD) amount of 8.48″. (same data as yesterday)

At 2400 obs Wednesday night the temperature from the VP2 was 38.7 RH 54% BP 29.77″R DP 23.5 .

Clear, not as cold, dry, no snow on the ground

Good morning from the clear and somewhat cold home of the Walrus early on this Friday.