We Survived Winter Storm Stella!

Like that's a great surprise. On Monday, we were near the boundary of the none to a trace, and the 2-6 inches of snow in snow predictions, so a little accumulating snow was expected but not exactly welcome. When I started my walk with Skye that afternoon, the sky was sunny and blue, but by the time I got home (in fact, when I got back to the harbor), the sky had clouded over, and the wind was picking up.

Before sunset, we had seen a few snow flakes, but nothing to stick. After dark, we had some sleet, at least in time for the 11 PM dog walk, and the wind howled over night. The Cove Point weather station shows wind peaked that night at 40 knots sustained, with gusts near 50:

On Tuesday morning, we were happy to find that no snow had accumulated overnight, and while the remainder of the day was rainy and raw, with just a few more snowflakes on the backside of the storm. We did get 1.3 inches of needed rain over the day. Last night,  the temperature has dropped to 21 F, and today the high is flirting with freezing, and as you can see above, the wind is still raging.

As the storm was getting ready to hit, the usual preparations were taking place. Schools and governments got ready to close or open late (even the Marines at Qun, and Democrats planned on blaming any problems in Washington D.C. and probably everywhere else, for that matter, on Donald Trump.

#43 twisted with Katrina, #44 soaked in Sandy. Will #DonaldDumpStella? Can 40 million ppl find #Stella sobering under #45 leadership?

— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) March 13, 2017

Donald Trump, anticipating the move,  called D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and the head of the Metro system, Paul J. Wiedefeld, into his office to inquire as to the state of preparations for the blizzard.

Nearly all the schools in the region closed. Day cares shut down. The federal government was on a three-hour delay. Even schools on Quantico base called it a day. If the Marines can’t defeat Winter Storm Stella, what hope do we have?

Last minute projections by the US Weather Service were for less snow than initially predicted, but fearing people might slack off on preparing, they did not revise their public forecasts. Just like government bureaucrats, lying to us for what they perceive to be our own good. Will they have to pay the extra costs incurred in the shutdowns.

All across the Northeast, Stella generally under-performed as it tracked closer to the coast, and was more of a sleet and snow event. However, in interior Pennsylvania and New York, some high snowfalls were recorded, up to 30 inches. There was some coastal flooding, as well, in coastal New Jersey, with tides up to 3 ft above normal. That would be annoying here, but hardly a catastrophe.