Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Nasty T-Storms

We got rocked by some of the worst t-storms I have seen in some time. 70 mph+ winds and golf ball sized hail. Went from a high of 104 during the day down to about 92 when the storms rolled through. After it was 71. Lack of rain and high heat made for very warm pond water. Throw in large amounts of cool rain water and it has mixed my pond all up. I am thinking it may have led to a fish kill as there were a number of fish doing circles on the surface piping for air. Over 1.5 million people are without power in the Washington, DC area with highs expected over 100 for the next couple days... No good!

CJ, that storm blew thru here around noon yesterday. Take a look at the "Took a trip to Joliet, Ill yesterday" for a few pics of what the clouds looked like here.

Travis,

Yeah I saw on the news that the governor of Maryland is calling the damage in your state akin to hurricane damage. Somewhere here in Indiana they had 90 mph gusts from one of the storms.

Eric told me once that a hail can drop a pond's temps in a hurry too although if found it more difficult to drop water temps with ice than I realized with one of my indoor tanks. I ended up putting 20 ten pound bags of ice into my 300 gallon tank to drop it 20 degrees.

On a funny note a few years ago I had pea sized hail hitting my trout pond. For a split second the trout thought it was feeding time until they probably got beaned in the heads and the feeding frenzy abruptly stopped!

I can imagine that!

What is up with this white stuff anyway?

Pea sized hail would be putting it on the giant size of anything I have ever seen. Been waiting my whole life to see something larger.

Dallas recently got hit with softball sized hail. The weather guy said that it takes a 90 mph updraft to keep it up there. When it finally comes down, it is traveling at 120 mph.

We regularly get quarter sized hail.

We at least got our power back, but no DSL Internet - just my cell phone. Our Virginia neighbors had power much of yesterday, but it went back out about 7:00 pm, and wasn't back yet at 11:00 pm. My son's neighborhood is still without.

We were camping when those storms rolled through in western Md. My Son looked at a weather site on his phone, he said "this is not good it says seek sturdy shelter", we looked around at the walls of the tent, so much for the 30% chance of storms. It stormed all night, but we made it, next morning we seen how fortunate we were driving around and seeing the damage they done.

I have a number of friends who are still without power. They've been stopping in all day to take refuge from the 100 degree heat. I am gonna head out here after dinner to do some wade fishing for some SMB in the Rappahhanock River to cool off.

Frogholler -- glad to hear you made it through OK. This was probably the nastiest unpredicted storms I've ever seen. I would not have wanted to be out in a tent during this one.

My watch battery died a few days earlier, so I didn't know what time it was when it started getting darker than it should have. I grabbed my cell phone and saw it was only 7:10 PM. I quickly looked at the weather radar. Egads! About where you were camping showed bright reds and yellow on the screen. Then we got the tornado and "take cover" warnings. It took about until 9:00 PM before it hit us. At least we were ready - almost. It went from extremely hot and calm to cool and 75 mph winds in just seconds.

We were fortunate to get our power back yesterday afternoon, and we got our DSL Internet back a little bit ago. My son and his family, who lives about 40 miles north of us, got their power back a few minutes ago.

We had to go into town (Winchester, VA) this afternoon. It was 100 to 102 degrees on the car thermometer. Thankfully, it only got to about 94 at our house.

The fish in both ponds sure were hungry tonight.

Travis -- I'm guessing the SMB were going crazy this afternoon. When I still lived on that side of the border, I wasn't far from Kelly's Ford, Richardsville, and the Rapidan/Rappahanock confluence. The SMB really seemed to love biting anything that moved in the late afternoons when the weather was like this.

Sounds like you guys got to experience storms like we routinely have in Oklahoma/Kansas/Texas.

My older son lives near OK City. I figure he experiences the worst weather anywhere in the US.

Unfortunately, it is time to unplug all the electronics. A major storm is getting ready to rage again!

Cecil that was Fort Wayne. I live 30 minutes west of there and I have to say the winds were close to that. And yesterdays storms wern't too much better. But hey on the bright side we got a little rain out of it.

Well that would explain why my twin brother that lives in Ft.Wayne was out of power as of yesterday.

I went to the property by Knox, and it looked like a war zone. I don't know if it was straight line winds or a small tornado. There are areas about 50 yds wide and 100-150 yds long where all the trees are either snapped off about 20' up, or pulled up and tipped over. That path is in a straight line, from NW to SE and looks to be around 3/4 mile to a mile long. Oak trees 20" dia are snapped 30' off of the ground. Luckily, none of the buildings on the property are damaged, but I'll bet there are over 100 trees that are damaged. I couldn't access the whole property, there were still trees/branches falling this morning. LOTS of widowmakers. I have to drag 2 trees out of one of the ponds, and I'll bet the clean-up around the ponds will take at least a week for 1-2 people. I'll be back there to meet with the property owner this afternoon and will bring the camera.

Be careful what you wish for....I'd rather not see any at all. Anything larger is going to cause some damage! Just sayin

We got hit here in Ohio with it too. I lost power that Friday for two days which was no fun with a 4 year old and a one year old who is trying to get teeth and running a fever doin it... Power came back on last Sunday for a few hours only to be knocked out again by a second storm which also took out my A/C unit. We spent all last week without A/C until this past Friday when they finally made it out to fix what turned out to be just the capacitor. All the heating and air places were busy fixing that problem for a lot of people. I had never been so happy to hand over $100 in my life! I think it was Thursday when I got home with the kids after work and walked in to the place and the thermostat said 94...

All I know is that we still haven't fully recovered. Our landline phone and DSL are still out. I'm just glad I have a "smart phone" and a good data package so I can get to the internet.

Tomorrow is the day to get the new whole house generator installation completed.

I am stiil without Internet, except for my cell phone. We keep getting these storms rolling through. Yesterday we got almost an inch of rain in about 15 minutes.

I think I'm to the point where I'm willing to take my chances with a nasty storm, as long as it brings rain with it. Every evening it gets dark, the wind picks up, and the thunder rolls, but no rain. And every morning I get up and think to myself: "Maybe today's the day of our salvation....bring the rain."

So, here's to another morning of hoping that today IS the day.

We really got a break here after I drained the pond with the smallmouth in it. It's been on and off thunderstorms since about 1:30 A.M. last night and still raining here in NE Indiana at about 10:25 A.M. Area rainfall totals range from 0.5 to 3.5 inches. I'm thinking we've got at least 2 inches here but will know for sure when my neighbor checks her rain gauge. I've got access to an NWS rainfall total map but can't pinpoint my location exact enough as less than a mile can make a big difference.

That's good news Cecil, I know you guys up there could use it also.

How bout that... I just heard thunder........ fingers crossed...

good to hear! we got 2 inches last Saturday. BTW, you know rain gauges are fairly cheap to buy

On last night's national news they showed a golf course somewhere in Indiana pi Illinois where the water traps had completely dried up. The cracks in the soil were so large that the golf balls were getting lost.

Well, the good news is the downspouts on the shop still work. The bad news.... we got less than a tenth. That's the most we've had in 8 weeks.

Still hopeful.

We finally got some rain. Yesterday afternoon a thunderstorm rolled thru and we had 1.25" rain in less than 2 hrs, plus 3/4" hail that almost covered the ground. Then more storms rolled thru last night with high winds. Rain gauge this morning showed 1.5" rain. I know I lost a branch in the only Elm tree on the property, and after the rain stops I'll do a property survey.

I'm really glad that we got the rain, starting Sunday temps are supposed to be back in the 90's with no rain for the next week to 10 days.

Power here went out for a minute, and cable/internet was gone for about 6 hours last night.