Author Topic: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain  (Read 901 times)

Offline JohnyMac

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Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« on: August 08, 2022, 09:08:12 AM »
According to my records that go back to 2012 here at the cabin in NE PA. this has been the hottest on record on my hill. Along with the heat, the humidity has been very high and we are way under precipitation totals. Our garden is struggling due to lack of water as is our water well. It is a balance between watering our garden and keeping our well not emptying for household use.  :facepalm:

Looking at those records, the closest year to this one weather wise was 2014. MrsMac asked me to look at the weather winter for 2014/15. It was colder than average with a lot of snow. Starting in January 2015, it snowed everyday for just over 40-days. Albeit, maybe only an inch, but it snowed every-bloody-day.

Well in short, MrsMac thinks that we are going to have a rather "frosty" winter up here in NE PA. That is why I am cutting an extra cord of wood this summer. So 7-cords in all vs. my normal 6-cords.

How is your summer going weather wise.

 
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Offline Jackalope

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2022, 09:38:59 AM »
    We had a cool spring, that lasted longer than normal.   Summer has had unrelenting heat and humidity, here in middle TN.  Our gardens are doing very well, because we've been having almost daily showers and thunderstorms.  It's been too hot for me to do much work outdoors, and I've been deferring projects for a hopefully cooler fall.  Potato crop production was almost zero, due to the high temperatures.  However, we have tomato and chili pepper plants that are over 6 feet tall in our greenhouse, they've never produced as much as this year.  We also have a bumper crop of rabbits, which produce plenty of entertainment for our four legged security team.

 :dancingBanana:


Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2022, 09:44:48 AM »
Jackalope, "which produce plenty of entertainment for our four legged security team".  :lmfao:  :cheers:
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Offline Sir John Honeybucket

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2022, 01:40:18 PM »
Pretty normal here, perhaps even a little cooler - though never cold by any means...  Soaking rains averaging twice per week, keeping the gardens happy, humid anf 85-90F on days between. Tomatoes are growing and ripening like crazy: we harvest every day.


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Offline pkveazey

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2022, 05:14:08 PM »
Well, Johnny, it has been really hot and I've had lots of rain. Everytime I cut the grass, it rains the next day and instead of cutting every 10 days, I end up cutting every 4 or 5 days. The weather experts say that the Northeast is going to be cold and lots of snow this year. That extra chord of wood is going to come in handy for your area. :facepalm:

Offline Jackalope

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2022, 09:04:03 AM »
    We also have a bumper crop of rabbits, which produce plenty of entertainment for our four legged security team.

 :dancingBanana:

   I should have mentioned that a younger member of our four legged security team occasionally manages to catch a rabbit.  That security member then gulps down the rabbit, fur, bones, eyeballs, everything!  She must have an incredible digestive system.

    Last night this same security team member managed to eliminate a 2 foot long snake, and then consumed it entirely, within a minute.  I wanted to ID the snake to make sure it wasn't poisonous, but I never got a chance.  This same team member is okay with baby chicks, so I guess she has a good understanding of her job.

Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2022, 09:29:40 AM »
PKv, the good thing with the lack of rain is, the lawn only has to be cut every other week.  ;D
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Offline cooter

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2022, 08:10:11 PM »
Our average rainfall is 51.4" per year.  Thus far we have had about 31.5" .  But a lot of that came late spring, it has been a little dry since then.
Our daily temp has been above or just below 90F since the end of April, with another month and a half of that pending.  It has been pretty humid as well.
Our climate is characterized as 'humid sub-tropical (north central Florida).
« Last Edit: August 09, 2022, 08:12:37 PM by cooter »

Offline FeedingFreedom

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #8 on: August 10, 2022, 12:04:43 AM »
We had 2.11" of rain here for the entire month of July. I've been running the drip irrigation at least once a day, otherwise the garden would be a near-total failure. Even the ferns were laying down yesterday. We got .3 inches of rain between yesterday and today, but that only staves it off for a couple days more. We need a few days of steady soaking rain.

To contrast, in 2018 we got over 12" of rain in 3 weeks in August. Just in a little narrow pocket, not even 1/8 of our county was seriously affected. Most years are a happy medium though, gotta learn to deal with the patterns of weather.

As far as temperatures, I think the average is much higher, but I can remember a couple years with several-day stretches with highs over 100 here, and that's since I've lived in my current house, so about 22 years. The absolute high temp here so far this year is 95.4.

Far too soon it will be snowing and blowing, so I'll take a little heat when I can get it. I used to detest hot weather, with every year I turn more in the opposite direction, and now I understand why people go south in the winter, or just stay there year-round.
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Offline Felix

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #9 on: August 10, 2022, 05:56:17 AM »
Desert Southwest here (albeit @ 7,000' surrounded by Ponderosa Pines)
Moisture here typically comes via Winter snow and Summer "monsoons".
Past Winter was light on snow yet weirdly alternating between wet/melt and cold such that ice was everywhere.
Spring was dry and exceptionally windy (duration and velocity)
Summer came with predictions of higher-than-average monsoon rain.   But that has not been the case - amount of well water needed to keep garden alive and dearth of mushrooms making a bad joke of those predictions.
So for the better part of a year now, weather here has strayed well beyond the guardrails of "normal" and "predicted".

Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2022, 09:19:03 AM »
Felix, my dad lived in Williams before he passed and he turned is lawn into a vegetable garden. No one told him he could not water his garden, LOL.

He once told me that it was so dry that he saw two trees competing over a dog pissing.  :troutSlap:
« Last Edit: August 10, 2022, 02:21:11 PM by JohnyMac »
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Offline Jackalope

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #11 on: August 10, 2022, 01:43:54 PM »
   The folks on the ERIN radio net have already heard this, for the other folks, we had a direct lightning strike yesterday afternoon.  The strike came in apparently through one of the antennas.  There was a bright flash and loud crack in our radio room.  There are multiple lightning arrestors installed in the antenna system, and all the interior cables were physically disconnected.  All power cables were also physically disconnected.  Even with these precautions, one vhf/uhf transceiver was damaged, along with some associated equipment.

    We also lost our internet, as the fiber optic interface box was rendered inoperative.  Multiple circuit breakers were also tripped.  We unplug most appliances when storms approach, so we dodged that bullet.

    We received over an inch of rain yesterday, and we're currently at 42.53" for the year, about 5" above normal.  We have a thunderstorm in progress as I type this.

Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2022, 02:28:00 PM »
Bummer Jackalope!  :(

LOL, I disconnected my radios BUT the VHF (Talking to Patriotman & forgot) after the ERIN net last evening.

Hey, talking about this subject, I was thinking of running #6 grounding wire from a 36" long copper pipe outside 25-feet, to a grounding rod. Currently, I have #10 wire running through the house to the houses grounding rods about a 75-foot run.

Thoughts gents? 
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Offline Jackalope

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2022, 09:58:50 PM »
    That's probably okay, but all the ground rods needs to be bonded together.  The ARRL has a good book on grounds. https://home.arrl.org/action/Store/Product-Details/productId/133989

« Last Edit: August 10, 2022, 10:03:05 PM by Jackalope »

Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #14 on: August 10, 2022, 10:43:45 PM »
 :thumbsUp:
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Offline FeedingFreedom

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #15 on: August 15, 2022, 11:41:20 AM »
Not much you can do against a direct strike, other than keep that high-temp plasma out of the house (and you!) by disconnecting the antennas from the house. Commercial installations have large and very expensive grounding systems that are designed to keep functioning after a strike. We took a strike on the tower outside the comm center while I was working, both of us on duty felt a tingle in our headsets despite a $30k system designed to prevent exactly that from occurring. Only actual damage was a cooked net clock, but the other dispatcher would not wear a headset after that. The grounds on the towers are all welded copper connections, which is kind of tough to do unless you have a TIG welder and a tank of helium.

Best you can do with a good home protection system is keep most of the energy outside, and minimize damage and risk of fire inside. Even a near-strike can produce induced voltages that will cook radios, especially if the coax is connected to the radio.

I have "lightning arrestors" on all my lines, which are great in the winter to bleed off static, and could minimize damage from lightning. If there's a chance of lightning, I still disconnect all coax from the house and attach it to a separate ground that consists of 3 rods driven in a 12' triangle and bonded with 2" copper strap. I have 2 commercial towers about 500' from the house, and they get hit frequently with some "interesting" effects on the electronics in my house. No damage, just some weird noises from any radio or speaker system that happens to be on. Probably be interesting to try to measure the voltage on my antennas when the towers get hit. It's all a severe pain in the 4th point of contact in the summer, my antennas are pretty much disconnected unless I'm going to actually use them. Might be overkill or timidity, but I'd like to keep all my radio gear intact. Also, you should definitely check with your insurance carrier, a lot of companies won't insure radio equipment against lightning, and if you install things "incorrectly", they could theoretically deny a claim if your house were to burn down from a lightning strike. ARRL has insurance for radio equipment available to its members, but I've never really looked into it deeply.
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Offline JohnyMac

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #16 on: August 15, 2022, 01:50:35 PM »
 :thumbsUp: F2
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Offline Jackalope

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2022, 09:03:53 PM »
Not much you can do against a direct strike, other than keep that high-temp plasma out of the house (and you!) by disconnecting the antennas from the house. Commercial installations have large and very expensive grounding systems that are designed to keep functioning after a strike. We took a strike on the tower outside the comm center while I was working, both of us on duty felt a tingle in our headsets despite a $30k system designed to prevent exactly that from occurring. Only actual damage was a cooked net clock, but the other dispatcher would not wear a headset after that. The grounds on the towers are all welded copper connections, which is kind of tough to do unless you have a TIG welder and a tank of helium.

Best you can do with a good home protection system is keep most of the energy outside, and minimize damage and risk of fire inside. Even a near-strike can produce induced voltages that will cook radios, especially if the coax is connected to the radio.

I have "lightning arrestors" on all my lines, which are great in the winter to bleed off static, and could minimize damage from lightning. If there's a chance of lightning, I still disconnect all coax from the house and attach it to a separate ground that consists of 3 rods driven in a 12' triangle and bonded with 2" copper strap. I have 2 commercial towers about 500' from the house, and they get hit frequently with some "interesting" effects on the electronics in my house. No damage, just some weird noises from any radio or speaker system that happens to be on. Probably be interesting to try to measure the voltage on my antennas when the towers get hit. It's all a severe pain in the 4th point of contact in the summer, my antennas are pretty much disconnected unless I'm going to actually use them. Might be overkill or timidity, but I'd like to keep all my radio gear intact. Also, you should definitely check with your insurance carrier, a lot of companies won't insure radio equipment against lightning, and if you install things "incorrectly", they could theoretically deny a claim if your house were to burn down from a lightning strike. ARRL has insurance for radio equipment available to its members, but I've never really looked into it deeply.

     I worked over 20+ year sat various repeater sites that experienced multiple lightning strikes on an annual basis, so I have reasonably extensive experience with lightning and proper grounding techniques.  In my case, I used Morgan Manufacturing lightning arrestors coupled with Alpha Delta antenna switches, which also have a lightning arrestor component built-in.  All coax cables were disconnected from the switches, and the cables are connected only when in actual operation.  It's a pain the butt, but it always worked in the past.

     The ham shack operates off of a photovoltaic system, which is also grounded.  All power cables were disconnected from the batteries.  The damaged vhf/uhf transceiver was connected to a MFJ voltage booster, which again, we not connected to any power source.  In the same vicinity were two other vhf/uhf transceivers, an IC-7300, a Kenwood R-600, a GMRS/FRS postable/base, a CB base, a tube HF receiver, a Uniden scanner, and a wireless weather station.  Al of the other equipment was literally inches away from the damaged equipment.  Induced voltages can do strange things.

      The only other item damaged in the house was a fiber optic interface box.  Two circuit breakers tripped, but no further damage has been noted.  I won't bother with an insurance claim, as our deductible is probably more than the damaged equipment cost.

       Topographically, we're located near the bottom of a bowl, and we're surrounded by much higher trees, so lightning hasn't been a major concern.  I haven't been able to determine which antenna handled the strike, as all are functioning fine.  But, I've had similar occurrences, after seeing lightning strike a repeater antenna, and then not having any notable damage.  I'm guessing in my case, most of the lightning strike was diverted by the arrestors, and only a small part entered the house.  I know one thing, the dogs were not happy with the light flash and the resulting crack.

Offline grizz

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Re: Worst Summer - It has Been Hot, Muggy, and Little Rain
« Reply #18 on: August 20, 2022, 01:00:14 PM »
Been raining here for weeks and predicted to continue for the foreseeable future
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