Some rain totals
The rain's not quite over for Baltimore, but here are some preliminary Ernesto rain totals from around the region as of late last night. BWI has seen 3.22 inches as of this morning, about where they expected in forecasts late Friday morning. Here is a more comprehensive list.
We've had just 1.31 inches here at 7 a.m. at the WeatherDeck in Cockeysville. It's still raining at about a tenth of an inch per hour, and the barometer is still near its low of 29.81 for this storm, but it does appear to have turned this morning, and is headed back up. The wind shifted from east to west at about 6 p.m. last night, so we're surely on the trailing side of the low. The peak wind here was just 17 mph, around 1 a.m., but my anemometer is sheltered by the house.
If you have a rain gauge, leave a comment and let us know how much rain you've seen. And don't forget to post your photos on the Readers' Photo Gallery on the main page of MarylandWeather.com.
This storm sure didn't live up to the forecasters' earlier 5- to 10-inch predictions for rainfall - at least not around Baltimore. I wonder how much the experience of the past two years in Florida and the Gulf has affected their "better safe than sorry" genes, resulting in more cautious, "worst-case scenario" forecasting.
It's also quite possible that they mean what they say when they tell us that meteorology has vastly improved the accuracy of storm-track forecasts (which they got right with Ernesto), while forecasters' skill at predicting the intensity of these storms lags way behind. They did seem to get the rain right 24 hours out. Somebody said recently that intensity forecasting for tropical systems is about where track forecasting was in the 1950s. Ernesto may be a case in point.
Comments
I just checked my rain gauge (8 am) and we've had about 2.8 inches in Towson.
Posted by: Christy | September 2, 2006 8:48 AM
Frank: If you check the National Hydrometeorological Center link given on the NHC website by clicking Advisory #35, it gives some pretty impressive rainfall totals for the east/northeast side of the storm. So far today, we in Upper Crossroads have had about 1.6 inches on top of what we got yesterday, which was between .75 and 1 inch.
Posted by: Rob Loskot | September 2, 2006 10:07 AM
We had a shade over 2 inches in Owings MIlls.
Posted by: Ron | September 2, 2006 10:29 AM
We had about 3 inches in Parkville, between 7:30 am on 9/1 and 12:30 on 9/2. It is still drizzling here, even though the radar shows the storm is past us.
Posted by: Susan Rudy | September 2, 2006 12:35 PM
2.2 in Manchester
Posted by: Bobby | September 2, 2006 3:51 PM
2.2 inches, 2 miles south of the Hagerstown Regional Airport in Western MD.
Posted by: Charles | September 2, 2006 6:13 PM
2.09" in sparks..total for sept 1-2..bob
Posted by: bob turtk | September 2, 2006 7:05 PM
Thanks for all the input, everybody. I'm looking at 1.86 inches on the WeatherDeck this evening at 8:20 pm - total for the storm in Cockeysville. Barometer's climbing fast (29.92 in.) BTW, just back from the Antiques Show at the Convention Center. There are two booths of antique weather instruments. Mostly barometers. Wonderful old things, but expensive. Several from the 18th century. They're working. And complete with pots of mercury. Yikes.
Posted by: frank roylance | September 2, 2006 8:25 PM
2.2 in Woodbine (Howard Co.).
Posted by: Henry Koontz | September 3, 2006 10:29 AM
If you go the Cocorahs.org site:
http://www.cocorahs.org/ViewData/ListDailyPrecipReports.aspx
and type a start date as 9/2/06 and an end date as 9/2/06, select Maryland, you will see 84 reports from Maryland for this event. You can also view the information on a map display. This is a volunteer precipitation observing network, open to all weather enthusiasts. Bruce
Posted by: Bruce Sullivan | September 5, 2006 6:51 AM