Easter Sunday started April out with no unexpected surprises for April’s Fool Day – mostly cloudy and a bit milder, but remaining dry all day for all the Easter festivities. The Sunday maximum temperature from the VP2 (63.5°) was recorded at 1527 while the Sunday minimum temperature (48.8°) was recorded at 0109. Dew point temperatures rebounded a bit from Saturday’s lower readings, ranging from a low of 32° at 0000 up to a high of 48° at 1507. Relative humidity values were muted some from Saturday, but generally averaged out about the same (62% – 48%) . Barometric values lowered on Saturday, starting out high early in the morning (30.09″ at 0554) down to the low much later at 30.01″ at 2356. The featured image today was taken in partial sunshine Sunday morning off my balcony in the courtyard, of what I believe is a dogwood tree in partial bloom. I will continue to monitor my budding spring trees and post them on occasion here as featured or attached (embedded) images.

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. The web address for my data on weather underground is: https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KMDrockv200#history/ I contribute daily to cocorahs as Rockville 2.8 WNW, Station ID MD-MG-115 on https://www.cocorahs.org/ Please remember that Weather Underground does not report snow data, and reflects what is recorded automatically through the tipping bucket VP2 gauge. I use the data I post to cocorahs as my “official” precipitation total each day.

I monitored the approaching snow chances overnight, but temps continued to remain in the mild 40s and 50s most of the evening. Over the weekend I welcomed a new cocorahs observer here in Montgomery County to the fold. She will report soon after she gets her official 4 inch cocorahs rain gauge. She only lives a few miles away from me. It will be interesting to monitor the differences as always.

Overnight Sunday into Monday skies remained cloudy and gradually colder, finally dropping into the upper 30s by sunrise, along with light rain after about 0100 and ending around 0700. The hoped for snow did not pan out, remaining to the north around the Maryland/Pennsylvania border and in the western Maryland and West Virginia mountains. Mostly cloudy but it should be drying out on Monday by the afternoon, with high temps remaining cool for early April in the low 50s, lows around the 40° mark. Tuesday should be partly cloudy and a tad milder with a 60 POP for PM showers, highs around 60° after mild mid 50s for lows. Wednesday features more partly cloudy skies with AM showers (60 POP) and wind, highs in the mid 60s and lows in the low-mid 30s. Thursday should be mostly sunny and cool, with lows in the low 40s and highs only in the low 50s. Friday should be cloudy with highs in the mid 50s and lows in the upper 20s. It certainly looks like a cool, damp week to start April off rather roughly.

On the channel 4 weather radar website at 0955 spotty showers have moved off to the SE and E, and light snow continues to move NE away from the region and is over most of Northern NJ, SE NY and southern New England at this time.

As of 0955, 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:

Cloudy, cold, and drying out

Station Relative Location Temp RH DP   BP      Wind  High/Low temp Sunday
VP2               Ground         39.5  92 37  30.12″R   NA    63.5/48.8

The total precipitation in the cocorahs gauge was 0.00″ through midnight Sunday. The VP2 tipping bucket rain gauge under my balcony also recorded 0.00″ through midnight Sunday. However, since midnight, 0.16″ has fallen through the VP2 gauge up to the present time. It appears from radar that our precipitation accumulations have ended for the day.

Sunday’s precipitation was 0.00″
March (final) precipitation total is 1.62″
April precipitation 0.00″
Sunday’s snowfall was 0.0″ (I will continue to report snow in April as this first week looks to have a few chances for snow, amazingly enough)
March snowfall 4.5″
April snowfall 0.0″
Snow on ground 0 (reported to the nearest half-inch)
The seasonal snowfall total is 12.0″.
Year-to-date precipitation total is 8.25″

WX Bug Lakewood 4500 ft, 38 97 38 30.09″R NNE 2 G NW 9
                              140° from station                     64/48
The Lakewood rain gauge recorded 0.00″ of precipitation on Sunday. It is now reporting a total of 3.37″ of precipitation in March and a 2018 year-to-date (YTD) amount of 10.87″. Since midnight it has recorded an additional 0.09″ of precipitation till the current time.

At 2400 obs Sunday night the temperature from the VP2 was 51.2 RH 56% BP 30.01″F DP 36.0.

Cloudy, cold, still dry at 2400

Good morning from the cloudy, cold, drying out home of the snowless walrus on this Monday.