WWW.Waiting_for_Washington_Winter

Now

Showers, cool. Persistent light showers ahead of a very strong Arctic front from the Great Lakes to central Texas have put a damper on temperatures in the Washington metro area, keeping them below yesterday's optimistic projections. They were still mild enough to break the string of 2 consecutive 1°-below-average days, however. Highs were 49° at National, 47° at Dulles, and 50° at BWI.

Total precipitation so far has been only a few hundredths of an inch at each location. Increasing moisture on southwesterly flow ahead of the approaching front is likely to put a damper on most of the holiday weekend as well.

Temperature chart at 3pm today from Unisys

Tonight and Tomorrow

Chance of showers, cool. There is a 30% chance of showers overnight with lows in the low to mid 40s. Tomorrow will be cloudy with a 50% chance of light showers and highs in the upper 50s.

For the outlook through the rest of the weekend, scroll on down to Camden's post below.

Canadian Climate Corner

Following the announcement this week that 2006 was the warmest in U.S. history, Environment Canada has announced that the year was within 0.1°C of the warmest in 60 years of official Canadian records.

Mediarology

Prof. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center and Associate Professor in the Dept. of Meteorology at Penn State, was interviewed Wednesday on NPR's All Things Considered. The bottom line:

"There's no way to explain the changes we've seen in terms of any of these natural factors. So in that context, when we talk about recent climate change, we are talking about humans."

Mann is also one of the founders of RealClimate.org. Running time of the streaming audio (no "free, free, free" trips to Atlantic City) is 5 minutes.