Saturday continued the hot and humid pattern of the week. The day featured partly to mostly cloudy skies, hot temperatures and quite high dew points. And also quite an intense thunderstorm in the mid-afternoon that featured brief heavy rain, high winds, vivid lightning and loud, booming thunder. The thunder started rumbling around 1400 but rain did’t start faliing till about 1515, with the most intense part of the storm not hitting hard till about 1600-1615. Power went out after the most powerful lightning bolt struck from directly overhead, even causing me to jump out of my seat for a second. The power only stayed out for 15-20 seconds but the damage was done. Electronic devices had to be restarted and our 4 floor elevator got knocked out of commission and remains out currently (0200 Sunday). A grocery food order I was having delivered could not be advanced past the ground floor and had to be temporarily stored in a party room kitchen refrigerator till the elevator can be out back into service. My cable TV also got knocked out that is going to need a new HDMI cable to fix connections back up properly. WHEW what an evening!!

Max temps reached the lower mid-90s by early afternoon before the cooling clouds moved in while the daily minimum temperature in the low 70s was reached right around midnight.

The winds briefly blew very strong during the height of the storm, peaking at 56 MPH from the W at 1607 for the second highest PWG of the year, only topped by the 59 MPH PWG recorded back on April 30. Barometric pressures were highest mid-morning while lowest in the early evening.

Sunday and Monday looking to be a bit cooler with highs of 83-88 under partly cloudy, dry skies and lows in the mid 60s both days. Conditions warm up again further into the week.

Statistics for Saturday:

High temp 93.3 at 1300

Low temp 72.3 at 2357

Max humidity 95% at 1724

Min humidity 55% at 1302

Max dew point 77 at 1107

Min dew point 70 at 1428

Max barometric pressure 30.06″ at 0850

Low barometric pressure 29.95″ at 1818

Peak Wind Gust (PWG) 56 MPH from the W at 1607

Saturday’s average daily wind speed 4.6 (BWI) 4.9 (IAD)

Saturday’s average sky cover 0.4 (BWI) 0.4 (IAD)

Daily total precipitation 1.27″ (BWI 0.03″ IAD 0.15″)

July total precipitation 2.87″

Year-to-date total precipitation 17.16″

Sunrise 0558 (EDT)

Sunset 2032 (EDT)

Moon First Quarter

Currently at 0237 AM EDT Sunday we have cloudy skies with a temperature of 71.8, barometer 30.00″ and steady, relative humidity 94%, dew point 70, winds SW at 0-5 MPH. No rain has fallen since midnight into the tipping bucket VP2 gauge at the USG site across the street from me.

The featured image for today shows this afternoon’s thunderstorm clouds building out my bedroom window. A second image (below)  shows the intense rain falling from that same window.