Where did wild morning storms come from?

First!

On a more serious note...where can we find a radar loop of the storm that struck our area this morning?

Here's the daily archived radar loop from Weather Underground.

CAPE at DCA at 7:00 am was huge at 5291 J/kg.

aha! so it was all pittsburgh's fault....jerks

My cat and I were asleep here in Annandale, windows open (no A/C) when what sounded like early morning construction work woke us. As it grew more continuous, it occurred to me it could be thunder, but, nah, it was the wrong time of day and besides it didn't sound like ominous like thunder. Suddenly all curtains blew straight into the room held aloft by ahhhh, blessedly coooool gusts, nice, so nice that when the rain began to fall I couldn't bear to close the windows. It was a surprising gentle rain, so gentle my 12 yr old cat relocated to the open window sill to better enjoy the drop in temperatures. More kindly storms, like that, please and fewer cruel downpours.

Rapid Climate Change............certainly abnormal, warmest July on record.

Just curious... is there a site with archived watches/warnings? Listening to wtop this morning, it sounded like they were forecasting the storms for northern suburbs and the warnings for places like Alexandria and Clinton may have come a bit on the late side. I guess the southern intensification wasn't fully expected.

Now at work where I have power, I'm starting to realize just how insane that storm was. As a dorky, avid weather fan... I'll admit that I was pretty scared. I thought my windows were going to blow in and I woke up to intense lightning right outside my apartment. According to WTOP, I was in one of the hardest hit areas - 16th St in Silver Spring. Scary!

@psilosome: where do get a local cape value exceeding 5000? The 8AM Dulles sounding shows 2500. That's impressive enough - 5000 around here is incredibly rare and pretty much impossible in the early morning.

It was dark as night at 7am this morning south of Fairfax City on 123, but no rain or thunder. Driving north on the FXCO Parkway it quickly cleared and by Route 50 it was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine. Hard to believe the reports on the radio that Canal Road was flooded and people were being rescued from their vehicles.

@spgass1

Doesn't have the graphics showing the exact outlines of the warning areas, but at the very least the archived history of our dcweatheralerts twitter feed -- http://twitter.com/dcweatheralerts -- helps show the timeline/location of warnings this morning.

Wasn't this an MCS, not just an ordinary straight line thunderstorm? At least ours wasn't as bad as this one: http://wapedia.mobi/en/File:Iem_radar_0805amksgf.png Also it seemed to get some energy by riding the front boundary. The steering at 700MB was from the NW this morning, but now I realize that picture was from overnight. The current plot at http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/ua_700.html seems to show the effects from the MCS as it passed through.

@hockeypunk, Washington will be revenged for the storms Pittsburgh keeps sending our way, when the Caps smite the Penguins during the Winter Classic.

Several of my colleagues had their cars smashed by treees this a.m., including a person driving on Canal Road. Fortunately the big tree rolled off the top of his car and the only damage was a cracked windshield.

what's a cape value? when are storms coming this afternoon to Arlington and DC?

Once again NW Spotsy left high & dry. 2.8" of rain since June 3. Please send me the rain minus the wind.

CAPE stands for "Convective Available Potential Energy." I had to look it up myself. Here's what I found:

"The convective available potential energy or CAPE, is used by weather officials and storm chasers to understand what the potential might be for severe weather, and how powerful those storms might become if they do materialize. The potential energy available for convection is expressed mathematically using a standard measurement of energy represented as Joules Per Kilogram. A high CAPE value might also be expressed by storm chasers and weather experts by using the term "high instability". When chasers talk about a highly unstable atmosphere, CAPE values are usually in excess of 2500 J/kg's which would supply ample energy for strong updrafts and violent storms should they develop."

Anything above 2500 is "very unstable" and above 3500 is "extremely unstable." If this morning was a 5000, that's "holy crap! unstable" or "Katie, bar the doors."

thakns, hisownfool1! even i understood that.

Here's the current CAPE plot which I believe is for 7 or 8 this morning (12Z).
http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/ua_con_cape.html

I see this sounding from 12Z at Dulles says CAPE:2647 http://weather.unisys.com/upper_air/skew/skew_KIAD.html

Maps appear to show that the evening commute is not going to be a good look.

I was at work this morning when the storm hit SE DC. One of my co-workers had just come in, and said she just missed the rain. Then someone else said, "wow, it's getting really dark outside!" We watched the brunt of the storm, and dealt with the resulting ceiling leaks - it was a fun morning. Hopefully I have power at home!

I got the CAPE value here
http://rucsoundings.noaa.gov/
Put in DCA and 11:00 Zulu time (7:00 am local): http://bit.ly/9ZcD7s

The only time I had seen it that dark before, was under the cover of a super-cell. What was the potential for tornados out of that storm?

CWG - I heard that a lot of global weather issues (hot US east coast, draughts in Russia, floods in Afganistan) might be a result of "frozen" jetstreams. Any thoughts?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727730.101-frozen-jet-stream-links-pakistan-floods-russian-fires.html

psilosome that is interesting. I wonder if extremely high CAPE is a plausible local effect? Maybe right before the storm? If you take your full URL and change dca to iad there is a CAPE of 1738 at the same time.