And Now For Something Completely Different . . .

Right Now

Garden-variety (as opposed to the industrial grade of recent days) thunderstorms with some areas of heavy rain are affecting parts of the area this evening.

With the threat of storms, a Flash Flood Warning remains in effect for Montgomery County where seepage at a Rockville dam is a concern.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Tonight, it will be warm and humid with scattered thunderstorms and lows near 71° in the city, mid to upper 60s in the cooler 'burbs. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny and a little less humid with seasonable highs in the upper 80s and a slight chance of afternoon or evening thunderstorms.

For the outlook into the weekend, see Dan's post below.

Deficit Demolished

Water-weary Washingtonians woke Wednesday with wonder: Sunshine! Blue Sky! After days of near-Biblical deluges, the rain finally stopped. At National, the rain ended at 3:48 am this morning, to be followed by a few minutes of drizzle. The excess precipitation since Friday was more than enough to wipe out the accumulated deficit for the year. In fact, what had been a deficit over 30% quickly reversed to an even larger surplus of 32% through yesterday.

CapitalWeather.com chart from NWS data, photo © Kevin Ambrose

Metaphorical Meteorological Meanings

Tom Toles finds a symbolic interpretation of the recent storms in today's WaPo editorial cartoon. (Note to online WaPo: That omnipresent Sprint/Nextel Flash ad is a CPU HOG! It gets your window closed immediately on the PM Update computer every time. Talk about negative advertising!)