Weather

Herdfan said:
Been reading about people stranded on I-95 south of DC. Hope they get them help soon.
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That whole situation on I-95 has been a real mess! People were stranded there starting yesterday when the snowstorm became overwhelming and then the state closed a section of the highway, about fifty miles or so, between two exits as everything in between was just all snarled up. Getting aid to people in their cars was very difficult and so a lot of them spent last night -- which was very cold! -- in their vehicles, and even later this morning things were still problematic, people still stranded and unable to move..... Not sure of how things are now, but I hope that by now they are significantly improved and that people have finally been able to move again. Many were not prepared for this kind of situation and didn't have much in the way of food with them, nor did they have blankets to keep warm during that cold, cold night. If someone was already in a situation with a car with not much gasoline left in the tank, they couldn't just keep the car running in order to stay warm, either. A bad scene all the way around.

This storm hit at a really bad time, with travelers returning home from the holidays, or in some cases "snowbirds" heading to Florida for their usual two-or-three month wintertime stay, and the always heavily-used I-95 corridor, which runs between Florida and the New England states, would have been busy anyway.... Especially since the weather was unusually mild leading up to this storm, which really was a dramatic change, some travelers probably underestimated the potential of the snow to develop and accumulate and decided to just head out anyway, and on Sunday (a surprisingly warm day for January) they may have started the long drive home planning to simply continue their journey to their destination on Monday. Weather conditions really changed dramatically and very quickly overnight.

On Monday later in the day even as it was still snowing to beat the band, or perhaps the snow had begun slowing down, others may have thought, "oh, no problem, I'm just running to DC from Richmond, the usual drive, so I'll just head on home to DC, it'll only be a couple of hours, maybe a little longer today....." Or someone was intending to just make a quick trip between two other locations along the I-95 corridor, which under normal conditions would not be an issue at all.

Of course common sense suggests that many of those people who were stranded on I-95 should never have been out on the road in the first place, given the predictions of the snowstorm, and certainly they really should not have set out after the snow had already started. I suspect a lot of people have learned a rather uncomfortable and downright painful lesson after having had to spend a bitterly cold night in their car, unable to move anywhere as I-95 had become a parking lot, more or less....
 
Clix Pix said:
That whole situation on I-95 has been a real mess! People were stranded there starting yesterday when the snowstorm became overwhelming and then the state closed a section of the highway, about fifty miles or so, between two exits as everything in between was just all snarled up. Getting aid to people in their cars was very difficult and so a lot of them spent last night -- which was very cold! -- in their vehicles, and even later this morning things were still problematic, people still stranded and unable to move..... Not sure of how things are now, but I hope that by now they are significantly improved and that people have finally been able to move again. Many were not prepared for this kind of situation and didn't have much in the way of food with them, nor did they have blankets to keep warm during that cold, cold night. If someone was already in a situation with a car with not much gasoline left in the tank, they couldn't just keep the car running in order to stay warm, either. A bad scene all the way around.

This storm hit at a really bad time, with travelers returning home from the holidays, or in some cases "snowbirds" heading to Florida for their usual two-or-three month wintertime stay, and the always heavily-used I-95 corridor, which runs between Florida and the New England states, would have been busy anyway.... Especially since the weather was unusually mild leading up to this storm, which really was a dramatic change, some travelers probably underestimated the potential of the snow to develop and accumulate and decided to just head out anyway, and on Sunday (a surprisingly warm day for January) they may have started the long drive home planning to simply continue their journey to their destination on Monday. Weather conditions really changed dramatically and very quickly overnight.

On Monday later in the day even as it was still snowing to beat the band, or perhaps the snow had begun slowing down, others may have thought, "oh, no problem, I'm just running to DC from Richmond, the usual drive, so I'll just head on home to DC, it'll only be a couple of hours, maybe a little longer today....." Or someone was intending to just make a quick trip between two other locations along the I-95 corridor, which under normal conditions would not be an issue at all.

Of course common sense suggests that many of those people who were stranded on I-95 should never have been out on the road in the first place, given the predictions of the snowstorm, and certainly they really should not have set out after the snow had already started. I suspect a lot of people have learned a rather uncomfortable and downright painful lesson after having had to spend a bitterly cold night in their car, unable to move anywhere as I-95 had become a parking lot, more or less....
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Even one of Virginia’s Senators got stuck. Tim Kaine posted about it on his Twitter account.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1478476547552169987/
 
Clix Pix said:
Of course common sense suggests that many of those people who were stranded on I-95 should never have been out on the road in the first place, given the predictions of the snowstorm, and certainly they really should not have set out after the snow had already started. I suspect a lot of people have learned a rather uncomfortable and downright painful lesson after having had to spend a bitterly cold night in their car, unable to move anywhere as I-95 had become a parking lot, more or less....
Click to expand...

I have an emergency kit in my truck that will get me through the night. It has some MRE's, water, a couple of the thin thermal blankets and a deck of cards. Never had to use it, but it's there if I need it.
 
well this morning the stream was the same but by this afternoon its down almost two feet I would say.
IMG_3764.jpeg
 
Traffic is flowing again on I-95; if it were me who had been stuck in that mess I would get off at the nearest exit and go find a hotel and treat myself to a well-deserved hot meal, hot shower and warm bed in which to sleep.....
 
One of my co-workers was stranded in his small (12 house) subdivision by multiple fallen trees, which had also taken out the power lines. His generator fuel ran out so he was getting cold. He used his car for warmth and to charge the cell phone battery. They cleared the trees out of the road today so he was able to get to a gas station and refuel the generator until the local power company can restore electricity. The power company gave an ETA of around midnight tonight to get it fixed.
 
They are calling for 3-6" tomorrow afternoon and evening. DOT was pre-treating the interstates today.

One reason I-95 was so bad was the snow followed rain, so they couldn't pre-treat the roads. They started doing it here about 5 years ago and it has made a difference.

But here, 3-6" isn't a shutdown event. Got to get 8-10" to really make travel difficult.

Edit: Track is moving a bit north. Now in the 4-8" band.
 
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Herdfan said:
They are calling for 3-6" tomorrow afternoon and evening. DOT was pre-treating the interstates today.

One reason I-95 was so bad was the snow followed rain, so they couldn't pre-treat the roads. They started doing it here about 5 years ago and it has made a difference.

But here, 3-6" isn't a shutdown event. Got to get 8-10" to really make travel difficult.

Edit: Track is moving a bit north. Now in the 4-8" band.
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You know I love West a Virginia. :)
 
Huntn said:
I’d hate to own that house. Where is this?
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portland oregon. this stream rambles from one end to the other. so far it has not gotten igher with the rain. its early without thew spring runoffs. but overall its been higher for al long time. I see it goes up and down every day depending on the rain. Saw 2' change from morning to afternoon.
 
Herdfan said:
Living in WV with the mountains that all have creeks at the bottom has taught me to never live by a creek or river. I have seen what happens with an area gets 3-4" of rain in an hour and am not interested.
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Yep, little creeks can turn vicious with a couple inches of rain. We had record rainfall in the summer floods in the Atlantic states in 2006, anything from 3 to 6 inches in a few hours. I'm glad I live at the top of one hill and halfway down another in the cross-direction, so water right here keeps going before it finds a stream to make more trouble with.

A local creek a couple miles from here came out of banks and reached out fifty feet to completely wash out a mile or so of a county road. And that was just what it did up here in the headwaters... Those little creeks and streams in the Catskills help feed the Delaware and Susquehanna river systems.... the water downsteam at the I-80 Delaware Water Gap bridge crested at 21 feet above normal.

Usually in summer you can see all the stones in the bed of that little creek that ate the local road here, and then it's only six to ten feet or so across along there. The water rise in 2006 was unbelievable, but hardly the worst of the damage those floods did. There are 220 bridges in this county of headwaters for two river systems, and least 3 dozen of them were destroyed or became unsafe. A lot of Rte 30 between I-86 and NY 206 had washouts too. Some bridges have still not been replaced.

They did of course repair the washout in I-88 about 15 miles from here, where a huge culvert under the roadways suddenly gave it up in the wee hours and the water then instantly took out all four lanes and the median strip. That killed two truck drivers whose rigs went into the chasm.

I-88 washout 2006 flood near Oneonta.jpg
 
We have all kinds of flooding going on around here. For a while, all the major mountain passes were closed and the highway south was, I think, flooded over, to the point that there was no way to get to the other side of the state from here if'n one had to. The land is heavily saturated from rain and snow melt, so we can expect mud slides just about anywhere, like that one that wiped out a small town up north several years back.

The way they build view property neighborhoods here, denuding the hillsides (so that you can have a fine view of the people across the valley who built their houses for a fine view of you), it seems like deadly mudslides are just about inevitable. But, pretty soon the big mountain will cut loose and kill us all, so we do have something to look forward to.
 
fooferdoggie said:
portland oregon. this stream rambles from one end to the other. so far it has not gotten igher with the rain. its early without thew spring runoffs. but overall its been higher for al long time. I see it goes up and down every day depending on the rain. Saw 2' change from morning to afternoon.
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Always loved the Portland area. :)
 
Herdfan said:
Living in WV with the mountains that all have creeks at the bottom has taught me to never live by a creek or river. I have seen what happens with an area gets 3-4" of rain in an hour and am not interested.
Click to expand...
My Aunt and Uncle had a house on a bluff overlooking the Monongahela River near Hambleton, WV. My grandparents house is farther up the mountain.
 
We had most of the day and night yesterday with rain, torrential rain, flash flood warnings, frick’n tornado spotted close to us in the Northern suburbs of Houston in January. :oops: This morning 71F here, 35F in Oklahoma looks like the heat won this round.

lizkat said:
Yep, little creeks can turn vicious with a couple inches of rain. We had record rainfall in the summer floods in the Atlantic states in 2006, anything from 3 to 6 inches in a few hours. I'm glad I live at the top of one hill and halfway down another in the cross-direction, so water right here keeps going before it finds a stream to make more trouble with.

A local creek a couple miles from here came out of banks and reached out fifty feet to completely wash out a mile or so of a county road. And that was just what it did up here in the headwaters... Those little creeks and streams in the Catskills help feed the Delaware and Susquehanna river systems.... the water downsteam at the I-80 Delaware Water Gap bridge crested at 21 feet above normal.

Usually in summer you can see all the stones in the bed of that little creek that ate the local road here, and then it's only six to ten feet or so across along there. The water rise in 2006 was unbelievable, but hardly the worst of the damage those floods did. There are 220 bridges in this county of headwaters for two river systems, and least 3 dozen of them were destroyed or became unsafe. A lot of Rte 30 between I-86 and NY 206 had washouts too. Some bridges have still not been replaced.

They did of course repair the washout in I-88 about 15 miles from here, where a huge culvert under the roadways suddenly gave it up in the wee hours and the water then instantly took out all four lanes and the median strip. That killed two truck drivers whose rigs went into the chasm.

View attachment 10878
Click to expand...
So that was a culvert not a bridge? Kind of looks like a river there.
 
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