A Stormy Night in Delaware

A storm front moved across Delaware last night, bring high winds, thunder and lightning, and possibly hail up and down the state.

The scene at right was at 7:05 p.m., just outside of Rehoboth Beach. Heavy rain showers had just moved through, though there was not much thunder or lightning. There was a momentary opening of the clouds that showed the sunny skies that had been around earlier in the day, and the tops of the storm clouds above the murk that hovered just over our heads.

As the evening progressed, we watched storms roll across the sky north of Lewes. They tend to pass us to the north, but we did get a few brushes of rain and wind and were able to watch the show from our north-facing living room windows.

And it was possible to track the various storms via twitter.

In Ocean City, Maryland:

• drvcrashI sweat a tornado is coming thru right now
• drvcrash It's hailing sideways
• scottking http://twitpic.com/67xft Hail just shattered the windshield on our neighbors truck. They look like cocktail onions.
• drvcrash @scottking yeah i was watching the cameras at work when it hit and all the customers run in
• scottking @drvcrash I can only picture being putt-putting or on the boardwalk and have it start hailing. Bet it's hilarious to see tourist run.

In New Castle County, Delaware:

• del_editor http://twitpic.com/680ld - rainbow outside the news journal
• del_editor power's out in bear, we hear
• del_editor about 5,600 Delmarva Power customers w/o power in Glasgow area. power back on by 11 p.m. they're saying.
• del_editor http://twitpic.com/6863r - rainbow on 141 SB

At around 10:00 p.m., del_editor, who works at the News Journal, tried a little twitter-based reporting:

• del_editor so how's the weather, any power outage situations out there in the south, north and in between delaware?
• andytuba @del_editor Well, Newark had that weird yellow sky earlier, but it stopped raining a while ago and the power's doing fine.
• lifeontheedges @del_editor not much crazy weather here, lots of thunder and lightning for a while but calm now. sky looked like orange sherbet at sunset.

I assume there were several other responses, from folks I don't follow, because del_editor soon seemed satisfied:

• del_editorI love the power of twitter. In a few seconds, I can gauge weather throughout state. thank you, all.

And others were watching the storm and storm-watchers:

• lifeontheedges wow, looking at flooding in Salisbury on @wboc preview

Meanwhile, in Southern California:

• martenhogeweg even the fox weather man is twittering: it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal.. it's sunny in socal..

And this morning? Here on Delmarva:

• oceanviewde Storm last night was worth the incredible weather it brought for today!