Wow, it was one of the badest storms this aftermoon.

I was picking up my kids at their school right when they hit my area.

I heard it hit hard down in Southern Md and part of NoVa. Hope everyone and all DCMMers are ok.

 

Yea, Its very bad down here. Hope everyone's Mini has a roof to park under!

 

Yep, it was big! Power went out at my office just before 3pm... and was still out at 6:40pm when I finally headed home.

The office manager apparently heard from the power company that it could be out 1 or 2 days! I think they were just not trying to set expectations... I'll be surprised if power is still out tomorrow morning.

 

Cricket and I were outside for the worst of the storm today. We had to dodge a few downed trees, but we both survived just fine. I hope everyone else did too. It was really scary out there!

 

Power's still out at my place in Alexandria near Mt Vernon. The whole area behind me out to the river is all dead.

Crystal City has power. Our headquarters at Gaithersburg doesn't have power yet either...

The damage along the GW parkway south to my place was weird. Very spotty. I heard there may have been a tornado in Huntington. Most places there were just small twigs and leaves down. But the Lyceum in Alexandria lost there entire covered portico / walkway. Roof and pillars all collapsed. I hope no one was hiding under there from the rain waiting on a bus!

 

I went to see Craig/rawk in Frederick and was on my way south to Leesburg in the MINI, trying to make it home (the temp dropped 15F in about two minutes). I got just north of town and saw the wall of water coming at me. About ten ft of visibility. I ended up making it home, but had to dodge those orange barrels from the ongoing road construction. Yokohama A048 rcomps rock in the rain! (seriously! )

I had dropped my brother off at the IADB at 13th and New York in the morning for a meeting. He was supposed to meet me at East Falls Church Metro - well, Metro closed the Orange Line. It took me 4.5 hours to go from Leesburg to Ballston to Tysons (to drop off a friend of ours who needed a ride home too) back to Leesburg. Thankfully, I had swapped for the Jeep (and auto transmission).

 

We got hit hard here in Gaithersburg about 3PM. There were a few large trees down in my neighborhood, and our power was out. We had a nice little block party, though - everyone brought out bottles of wine and snacky stuff.

Oh well, at least it washed the pollen off my car.

 

good thing i washed my car the night before.

 

Hit pretty good down here in Richmond too.. Had a few twister sightings as well.. one was so close we had to evac the building i was working in. Only to return 2 hours later and finish my shift.

 

a tornado touched down about an eighth of a mile south of our house!
We would've never known about it if it hadn't been on the 11 o'clock news. We both heard the words "Round Bay" (the area we live in) and "Old County Road" (the street we live on), and started to pay attention. Holy cow! We recognized the part of the road where the reporter was standing, and realized just how close it came.

We never lost power, nor do we have any damage. I looked around this AM, and sure enough, our street is closed to the south, BGE crews and police cars everywhere. I drove out to 648, which roughly parallels Old County, and you can see a path of destruction.

Scary, to say the least. Last year, a neighbor's garage was struck by lightening. It was close enough I could stand on our front porch to watch the fire crews put it out.

Lordy, what's next?

 

I was at Arlington Cemetery just as it hit (although I didn't get as wet as that Honor Guard video you may have seen on CNN.com!) But only because we were already moving back to the cars as it got really bad.

The MINI was tucked away at Vienna Metro so no damage, but we did loose power out in Chantilly, and my folks near Warrenton didn't get power back until about 2am.

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-31270

BTW I wasn't at or see this funeral, we were at another funeral for a member of my wife's family at about the same time.

 

Powers' back on at my headquarters in Gaithersburg and house in Alexandria down by Mt Vernon...

 

some good came out from the rain... Luna got finally washed...

No problems in the city (DC) never lost power and by the time I left the gym all the bird droppings were gone !!!

 

After the storm hit, we got power, until now. Now we have no power. :(
Bge said, if we're lucky, we may have the power back on by Friday evening.
How could I browse nam
without power, arggh.
My blackberry is so slow.

 

First time in 6 years of working here at State Farm in Frederick that we had to go down to the Tornado evac area. Based on the way the trees were leaning over, I'd say the winds were easily in excess of 50 mph. For a while, the water was coming down in torrential sheets and the sky was an odd color. Having spent over 11 years in Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma and having witnessed several tornadoes up close and personal, I thought one was going to develop.

I worked three new auto claims today related to the weather (for those of you who don't know, I handle Bodily Injury Liability claims). People need to learn to pull over and NOT drive in that kind of rain and wind.

 

the storm came in from the west. we have a doggie door on the east side of the house. The wind was so bad, it sucked the door open and rain hit my laptop 11ft away on the ottoman. that door is only about 20"x"16" square. NUTS!!

 

Is it back on yet?

 

Starbuck was in the body shop all nice and safe. I picked her up Wednesday at 6pm (in Manassas) after taking 2 hours to get from Davidsonville in a loaner. My client (a really high-end dental practice) lost a tree. Lots of trees were downed on 214. There were still electrical issues in Rockville and Manassas as of 6pm yesterday. My largest client didn't get Internet access (their ISP datacenter is in McLean) until 10pm last night. I'm glad everyone else is okay.

 

We didn't have any damage here, except for a piece of plastic lawn furniture getting a big chip when it slammed into the fence. The trees were whipping all around, and lots of very close lightning strikes.

We had a few power flickers, but the only time we "lost" power was yesterday when DomPwr turned it off for an hour to take a tree off the lines. I heard rumours of a tornado in Fredericksburg at I-95 and Rte 17, but no confirmation of that.

Saw a few of those $695 aluminum car ports torn out of the ground, a hay wagon that was picked up and crumpled like a piece of paper, and a shed that had been tossed around. There were a lot of big trees knocked down all over the area, of the 100+ year old oak variety. What is really kind of cool in a rural area is all the farmers break out their big-*** JD tractors and go clear the roads. We went exploring after the storm subsided and we were behind two that were tag-teaming to push all the trees and big branches off the road out to the main highway. There were 7 or 8 down in the 4 mile stretch of our country road out to Route 17. Pretty cool.