would you like squalls with that shelf cloud?

Yesterday a well-developed squall line moved through Annapolis and the greater Baltimore-Washington metro area. Our ASOS station here (KNAK) reported squalls and a gust to 62 mph, along with 0.36" of rainfall.

KNAK 252002Z AUTO 31028G54KT 1 1/4SM -RA SQ FEW046 SCT070 31/21 A2987 RMK AO2 PK WND 27054/1959 RAB01 PRESRR P0003 TSNO

I was driving back from Washington and saw all sorts of crap blowing around in the gust front. I had hoped that if I just made it east of the line I could beat it home, but the line itself was racing ese at 60 mph, all but cutting off my hasty return home. So instead I joined the other hundreds of motorists on Rte 50 crawling at 40-45 mph. The biggest impact on me personally is the loss of power to my townhome (going on 21.5 hours now w/out electricity), and the probable loss of perishables from the refrigerator (milk, juice, yogurt, cheese... anyone have any ideas on what can survive 24 hrs without power??)

Will see what happens when I get home. The BG&E website has shown slow progress toward re-establishing power in areas (ex: when I got to work, over 22,000 customers in my county were powerless... now it's only 16,500; that's 5,500 customers restored in 5 hours). I went jogging in the neighborhood behind me, Admiral Heights, and actually saw less damage than I thought: a few downed wires (3 total), one tree perched on a powerline, and a couple of bigger limbs down-- but no trees through anyone's home, no big damages. Again we'll see how long it takes them to restore power- given this track record, I think I'll be buying some flashlights/batteries soon (heaven forbid we get a mid-Atlantic landfalling hurricane this year- we'd be without for a week!)