B8 WEATHER Washington area today The Capital Weather Gang’s forecast
Sunshine starts the day, but partial cloud cover develops in the afternoon as winds from the south return and increase the humidity a little. Some areas could see a shower, but most spots stay dry through the afternoon. Highs will be around 90.
For the latest updates, visit the Capital Weather Gang blog:
washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang
The Region Today Today’s Pollen Index
Mold Trees Weeds Grass Low
Low Low
Harrisburg Hagerstown
88/68 86/68
Baltimore 89/69
Washington 88/72
Richmond Charlottesville
88/64 92/70
Norfolk 88/71
Blue Ridge
•Today, partly sunny, a thunderstorm south. High 82-88. Wind light, variable. •Tonight, partly cloudy, thunderstorms south. Low 56-65. Wind light, variable. •Wednesday, partly sunny, a thunderstorm. High 83-91. Wind light, variable.
Boating Forecast »
Virginia Beach 86/69
Recreational Forecast Atlantic beaches
•Today, partly sunny. High 84-88. Wind south 4-8 mph. •Tonight, mostly clear. Low 68-72. Wind southwest 4-8 mph. •Wednesday, mostly sunny, humid. High 86- 90. Wind south 7-14 mph. •Thursday, partly sunny. High 88-95. Wind south- west 8-16 mph.
Upper Potomac River: Today, partly
sunny. Wind north 5-10 knots. Waves 1 foot or less. Visibility unre- stricted. Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay: Today, partly sunny. Wind southeast at 5-10 knots. Waves 1 foot or less on the lower Potomac and 1 foot on the Chesapeake Bay. River Stages: The river stage at Little Falls will be 2.7 feet today and remaining at 2.7 on Wednesday. Flood stage at Little Falls is 10 feet.
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Annapolis 86/72
Ocean City 86/70
Dover 87/68
Low
Ultra-Violet Index Air Quality Index
7 out of 11+, High
Yesterday’s main offender: Today: Moderate
Ozone, 45 The higher the UV Index number, the greater the need for eye and skin protection.
Philadelphia 89/71
North
KEY» Temperature
100s°+ 90s° 80s° 70s° 60s° 50s° 40s° 30s° 20s° 10s° 0s° -0s°
-10s°+ Precipitation
Showers Rain T-Storms Flurries Snow Ice
Nation
City Today Albany, NY
Albuquerque 84/65/t Anchorage 63/54/sh Atlanta 94/76/t Austin 90/73/t Baltimore 89/69/s Billings, MT
Birmingham 92/76/t
86/62/s 90/74/s 86/64/t 64/54/c 94/77/t 91/73/t 90/74/s
86/57/pc 85/61/t 95/77/t
Bismarck, ND 84/54/t 78/53/pc Boise 94/66/t Boston 88/70/s Buffalo 84/65/s
94/64/t 91/71/s 90/69/t
Burlington, VT 82/62/s 88/71/s Charleston, SC 92/77/t 93/78/t Charleston, WV 92/69/pc 92/74/t Charlotte 88/73/t
90/73/t
Cheyenne, WY 90/59/s 85/60/t Chicago 90/75/s
94/70/t
Cincinnati 94/73/pc 91/74/t Cleveland 86/65/s Dallas 94/78/t Denver 96/62/s Des Moines
92/73/t 95/77/t 91/64/t
Detroit 88/69/s El Paso
94/75/s 86/68/t 92/71/t
89/70/pc 86/66/t
Fairbanks, AK 65/50/t 66/51/c Fargo, ND
86/59/t 76/54/s
Hartford, CT 86/62/s 91/73/s Honolulu 88/75/s Houston 89/77/t Indianapolis 92/74/pc Jackson, MS
92/72/t 94/73/t
Jacksonville, FL 95/76/pc 96/76/pc Kansas City, MO 94/75/pc 94/75/s Las Vegas
102/80/pc 103/80/pc
89/76/s 92/77/t 92/74/t
Tomorrow City Today Little Rock
Los Angeles Tomorrow
Louisville 92/76/t Memphis 93/76/t
92/75/t 92/77/t 77/62/pc 79/64/pc 91/75/t 94/78/t
Miami 93/78/pc 92/79/s Milwaukee 86/75/s Minneapolis 94/69/t Nashville 92/76/t
88/67/t
81/61/pc 94/76/t
New Orleans 91/78/t 92/77/s New York City 88/76/s 89/80/s Norfolk 88/71/pc 90/74/s Oklahoma City 94/73/pc 94/74/s Omaha 96/75/s
92/76/s 90/69/t
S
KLMNO Today Mostly sunny
88° 72°
Wind southeast 4-8 mph
American Forecast
FOR NOON TODAY
Seattle Portlan
SeattlSeattle Portland Sacramento Sacramento San Francisc Los Angele
Fronts Cold
Warm Stationary
Pressure Centers
High Low Key » s-Sunny, pc-Partly Cloudy, c-Cloudy, r-Rain, sh-Showers, t-Thunderstorms, sf-Snow Flurries, sn-Snow, i-Ice. World City Today
Addis Ababa 66/59/t 66/57/t Amsterdam 71/62/c Athens 88/70/s Auckland 57/46/sh Baghdad 114/78/s Bangkok 92/80/t Beijing 92/77/pc Berlin 78/60/s Bogota 62/47/r Brussels 74/61/c
89/70/pc
Orlando 95/75/pc 95/77/pc Philadelphia 89/71/s
Phoenix 101/84/pc 103/86/t Pittsburgh 87/65/s
Portland, ME 86/60/s 84/69/s Portland, OR
86/58/s 83/58/s
Providence, RI 88/67/s 90/73/s Raleigh, NC Reno, NV
Richmond 92/70/pc Sacramento 90/55/s St. Louis
88/70/t 94/74/t 93/61/s 93/59/pc 94/74/s 89/56/s
94/78/t 96/78/pc
St. Thomas, VI 90/78/sh 90/80/sh Salt Lake City 95/70/t 89/70/t San Diego
79/55/s 71/66/pc 70/64/pc
San Francisco 66/54/pc 69/54/pc San Juan, PR 88/78/pc 89/78/sh Seattle 81/57/s
Spokane, WA 94/62/pc 90/60/s Syracuse 85/64/s
90/70/s
Tampa 92/79/pc 92/77/pc Wichita 95/74/pc 94/74/s
NOTE: These are the predicted high/low temperatures and forecasts, through 5 p.m. Eastern time. 83/71/t
Tomorrow City Today Lisbon 99/73/s
69/54/r 88/71/s 56/45/pc 118/82/s 92/79/t
97/77/pc 75/59/pc 65/46/c 67/48/r
Buenos Aires 59/44/s 49/41/pc Cairo 102/75/s 98/70/s Caracas 83/72/t Copenhagen 74/60/s Dakar 85/76/c Dublin 64/52/pc Edinburgh 65/50/pc Frankfurt 74/59/c Geneva
76/62/pc 83/73/pc 64/52/pc 66/49/c 68/56/r
74/55/c 72/59/pc
Ham., Bermuda 84/77/t 84/77/sh Helsinki 84/72/t
88/72/s
Ho Chi Minh City 87/76/t 87/76/r Hong Kong
Islamabad 93/76/t Istanbul 88/73/s Jerusalem 85/62/s Johannesburg 63/40/s Kabul 102/67/s
95/87/t
Lagos 80/72/t Lima 70/57/s
Yesterday’s extremes (Continental U.S. only)
High: 108° Needles, Calif. Low: 36° Leadville, Colo.
SOURCES:
AccuWeather.com; Walter Reed Army Medical Center (pollen data) ; Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; American Lung Association; National Weather Service.
86/79/t 88/82/t 84/80/t
89/72/pc 80/63/s 65/39/s 91/65/c
Kingston, Jam. 89/78/sh 88/80/r Kolkata
98/85/t
81/72/sh 71/58/s
London 73/57/r Madrid 93/67/s Manila 85/78/t Mexico City
Tomorrow 99/70/s
72/55/pc 95/67/s 87/78/t
Montreal 84/70/s Moscow 93/66/c Mumbai 88/83/t Nairobi 73/54/c New Delhi
84/66/s
73/54/t 70/55/r 83/64/t
97/66/pc 90/82/t 78/53/r
87/78/t 89/79/t
Oslo 73/53/pc 75/57/c Ottawa
86/64/t
Paris 79/64/pc 74/54/pc Prague 77/57/pc
77/59/r
Rio de Janeiro 75/68/pc 76/68/c Riyadh 102/79/pc 101/79/pc Rome 82/63/s Santiago 60/41/pc
84/64/s 57/39/s
San Salvador 88/74/t 87/74/pc Sarajevo
69/52/t
Seoul 88/71/t Shanghai 89/79/t Singapore 90/79/t Stockholm 75/63/pc Sydney 64/50/s Taipei 89/79/sh Tehran 94/74/s
74/49/c 90/74/pc 91/80/pc 88/79/t
79/64/pc 63/50/sh 91/79/t 92/73/s
Tokyo 92/77/pc 88/72/s Toronto 84/66/s Vienna 76/62/c Warsaw 68/61/r
86/61/t 70/63/r 69/57/r
Yerevan 103/62/s 102/60/s The world (excluding Antarctica)
High: 118° Adrar, Algeria Low: 16° Summit Station, Greenland
Rise Set
8:24 p.m.
9:06 p.m. 7:33 a.m.
Los Angeles Los Angeles Phoenix Phoenix Dalla
Houston Mo
HoustoHouston Monterre Monterrey nterrey Dallas Dallas Atlant New OrleanOrleans New Orleans ew Miami Miami Atlanta Atlanta
Charleston Tamp
Charlesto Tampa
Charleston Tampa
San Francisco San Francisco Portland Helena
Salt City
Salt La
Lake Ci
Lake City
ke Denver Denver Denve Helena
Wednesday Mostly sunny
91° 76°
Wind south 7-14 mph Thursday Thunderstorm
92° 73°
Wind west-southwest 8-16 mph Friday Mostly sunny
86° 67°
Wind north-northwest 8-16 mph
Saturday Sunny
86° 69°
Wind north 7-14 mph
TUESDAY, JULY 27, 2010
News, traffi c, weather. Now.
POSTLOCAL
postlocal.com Calga Calgary Calgary Winnipeg Winnipeg Winnipe Ottaw
Rapid Ci
Rapid City
City
St. Louis Chi
St. Loui St. Louis
Chicago Mpl
St. Paul
Mpls.- St. Pau
s.- Chicag cago
St. Paul Mpls.-
PhiPhiladelphialadelphia Columbus Columbus Ottawa ttawa Bosto Washingto Washington Washington Boston Boston New Yor New York ew York
Official weather data Reagan
Temperature High Low
Normal Record high
Record low
Precipitation Past 24 hours Total this month Normal month to date Total this year Normal to date
Relative humidity Max. Min.
88° at 5:00 p.m. 75° at 5:44 a.m. 89°/71°
103° in 1930 54° in 1920
None 4.47” 3.07” 18.07” 22.23”
75% at 3:00 a.m. 33% at 3:00 p.m.
Barometric pressure High Low
Temperature trend
40° 60° 80° 100° 120°
PAST TEN DAYS
0" 1" 2" 3" 4" 5" 6"
Normal TODAY TEN-DAY FORECAST
Precipitation almanac, 2009 - 2010 Actual
30.11” 29.97”
Actual and f or ecast
THROUGH 5 P.M. YESTERDAY BWI
Dulles
87° at 5:00 p.m. 74° at 6:00 a.m. 88°/65°
98° in 1966 50° in 1976
None 3.63” 3.00” 21.63” 23.88”
84% at 3:00 a.m. 38% at 4:00 p.m.
30.12” 29.99”
Normal Record
88° at 4:00 p.m. 70° at 4:35 a.m. 87°/66°
101° in 1940 55° in 1976
None 3.95” 3.25” 23.11” 23.99”
84% at 2:00 a.m. 31% at 3:00 p.m.
30.09” 29.97”
Apparent Temperature:
88°
(Comfort index com- bines temperature and humidity.)
Cooling
degree days An index of fuel con- sumption indicating how many degrees the average tempera- ture rose above 65 for the day. If a day’s average temperature were 75, there would be 10 ‘degree days’ for the date. Monday .............. 17 This month....... 485 This season .... 1198 Normal to yesterday ........ 821 Last season ...... 698
J A S O N D J F M A M J
Today’s tides High tides are in bold face Washington Annapolis Ocean City Norfolk
4:12 a.m. 9:39 a.m. 4:47 p.m. 10:06 p.m. 12:02 a.m. 6:50 a.m. 1:33 p.m. 7:06 p.m. 3:08 a.m. 8:59 a.m. 3:02 p.m. 9:23 p.m. 4:57 a.m. 11:01 a.m. 5:05 p.m. 11:22 p.m.
Point Lookout 2:54 a.m. 9:41 a.m. 3:10 p.m. 8:53 p.m. Moon phases
Aug 3 Last Quarter
Aug 9 New
Aug 16 First Quarter
Solar system
Sun Moon Mercury Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus 6:04 a.m.
8:13 a.m. 9:36 p.m.
9:49 a.m. 10:25 p.m.
10:36 a.m. 10:49 p.m.
11:00 p.m. 11:06 a.m.
10:44 a.m. 11:01 p.m.
10:50 p.m. 10:52 a.m.
Aug 24 Full
NTSB report may be far-reaching metro from B1
ommendations, which the NTSB makes without regard to cost and has no statutory power to en- force. The mission of the NTSB is to conduct objective investiga- tions to determine the probable causes of transportation acci- dents and to recommend ways to prevent them. Metro is not required by law to implement the NTSB recommen- dations but has set aside $30 mil- lion in its capital budget for three years to carry out any changes, Metro Interim General Manager Richard Sarles said. But Metro officials acknowledge that the recommendations could involve much higher costs over a longer time period. “Any recommendation will probably be a long-term effort” and would require Maryland, Virginia and the District to agree on a reprogramming of funds in Metro’s six-year, $5 billion cap- ital funding agreement, Metro Chief Financial Officer Carol Kis- sal said.
Federal influence
The Obama administration is pushing legislation that would grant the Federal Transit Admin- istration unprecedented regula- tory authority over Metro and other public transit systems, but that remains stalled in the House.
Absent such authority, the FTA has reserved the right to revisit its approval for urgent Metro safety
improvement projects, and to modify the list of projects, to make sure the spending is in line with NTSB recommenda- tions, according to FTA Adminis- trator Peter Rogoff in a letter to Metro this month. That list of projects includes $220 million worth of capital improvements and was expanded Monday to in- clude approval for funding for Metro’s procurement of 300 rail cars to replace the oldest cars in the transit agency’s fleet. “We’ve been getting more lip
service than real service from Metro,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said. “Metro must fully implement the recommenda- tions of the National Transporta- tion Safety Board report,” which will contain “lessons learned” for all the nation’s transit agencies. “Congress must also do its part by passing legislation that gives
transit community and federal regulatory organizations, Ser- chak said.
Issues raised earlier
The board issued several safety recommendations last year, urg- ing Metro to inspect track cir- cuits and install a real-time back- up to the automated train-con- trol system, and has advised other transit agencies to make sure they have adequate safety redundancy. The board has also scrutinized
Metro’s maintenance of train- control components as well as its procedures for testing them. A Metro crew replaced a key piece of circuitry five days before the accident, but the equipment mal- functioned and Metro failed to detect the problem. NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P.
JAMES M. THRESHER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
U.S. investigators have focused on the failure of Metro’s automatic train-control system in the 2009 accident, in which one train slammed into another stopped north of the Fort Totten Station.
the U.S. Department of Transpor- tation the authority to establish and enforce federal safety stan- dards for U.S. transit systems and to make sure that Metro’s budget focuses on safety improvements,” Mikulski said. Metro faces four open NTSB
investigations, more than any other transit agency in the his- tory of the NTSB, according to NTSB spokeswoman Bridget Ser- chak. “In the 42 years we have been around, no one seems to re- call that we have had four open investigations on any transit agency,” she said. As a result, the NTSB probe
has examined possible connec- tions between the incidents and the overarching lack of a robust safety culture and oversight at Metro, which has the second- busiest rail system in the nation. The NTSB rarely has the op-
portunity to explore safety issues at urban subway systems, Ser- chak said. “This allows us to delve into
[Metro] as an organization, as well as a broad brush opportuni- ty to look at the transit communi- ty,” she said. “We can only do things in conjunction with an ac- cident.” Most accidents are less com-
plex and involve fewer parties, Serchak said. But the NTSB held awide-ranging three-day hearing in February to look at the Red Line crash and broader issues, such as how Metro identifies and corrects safety hazards and the adequacy of state and federal oversight. The hearing took sworn testimony from nearly two dozen witnesses, including a Metro engineer who acknowl- edged that Metro’s automatic crash-avoidance system had failed twice before the June acci- dent, causing near misses, de- spite Metro’s initial claims that it was a freak occurrence. Metro’s decision to mix brands of signal- ing equipment, despite the manufacturer’s warning, could have caused the June crash, said a representative of the company, Alstom, at the hearing. At the meeting Tuesday, feder-
al investigators will present their final report. After questions and answers, the five-person board will conduct three votes: on the findings, the cause and the rec- ommendations. It will then vote on whether to adopt the report. “It’s a jumping-off point for us
to make recommendations to a whole series of folks,” including not only Metro but the public
Hersman has said she was dis- appointed in Metro’s response to the early recommendations. “The safety board was very clear what the problem was very early in the investigation,” she said in an in- terview on the eve of the June 22 crash’s first anniversary. Sarles said Thursday that Met- ro has moved aggressively to comply with the NTSB’s recom- mendations. Metro has instituted a twice-
daily evaluation of track circuits and established tests to identify track circuits susceptible to the kind of failure linked to the June 2009 crash, he said. It is working on a real-time, 24-hour-a-day au- tomatic track circuit monitoring system and plans to implement that in December, Metro said. Metro is also working on procur- ing an automatic train-control back-up system that would allow the agency to consider returning to automatic operations. In response to earlier NTSB recommendations, Metro has be- gun installing rollback protec- tion on its rail cars and guarded switches, which help keep the wheels on the track when the train switches from one track to another to decrease the risk of derailments, and has beefed up its safety office and oversight. “We are committed to consid- ering and following through on the findings and recommenda- tions,” Sarles said in a statement Monday.
tysona@washpost.com
PETULA DVORAK
It’s official: The Chesapeake has gone down the toilet
dvorak from B1
the Anne Arundel County Department of Health explains that, for safe swimming, there shouldn’t be more than 35 bacterial colonies for every 100 milliliters of water in samples that are tested weekly. (Hawaii, by the way, shuts down a beach when a mere seven are found.)
But we here on the East Coast are hardier souls. We can stare down those bacteria and laugh in their little silica-covered faces. We ride in Metro cars with no air conditioning, hike up broken Metro escalators and insist on wearing Brooks Brothers suits on 100-degree days.
So let’s see if we can stomach
what those students found in the water. They went to six sites along
the Chesapeake that aren’t regularly tested by state agencies. The worst news came from
Savage Park in Howard County, where the Little Patuxent River flows and draws fishers and swimmers, although swimming is not officially allowed. On July 7, the water there had
40 bacterial colonies per 100 milliliters. But after a rain had swept all kinds of nasty runoff into the bay July 15, the testers found a cringe-inducing 1,752 colonies. The fetid toilet water? It had
relatively humble 268. Perhaps even scarier was the sample taken at Fairview Beach in King George County, Va., because that is an official public beach on the Potomac River. It had 240 of those hideous, feces-dwelling little buggers for every 100 milliliters of water. The difference in the findings
before and after major thunderstorms is dramatic, underscoring the horrible effects of storm water runoff. “We have a gulf oil spill right here on the Chesapeake every
day,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation President William C. Baker, said last month. “Almost a million pounds of nitrogen flows into the bay every day” from farms, rolling green lawns, pavement, sewage plants and airborne pollutants. It is a tragedy that one of the
biggest factors in destroying America’s largest estuary is pinpointed and preventable yet has not been curtailed. For decades, pollution standards were not enforced, and the Chesapeake Bay grew dirtier and dirtier. But in the past few months,
In some places after it’s rained, the Chesapeake Bay is six times dirtier than the unflushed john.
the Obama administration has pledged a new effort by the Environmental Protective Agency to clean things up; the EPA settled a recent lawsuit in which it agreed to enforce tougher, new pollution-reduction standards. And last month, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works passed the Chesapeake Clean Water Act. That’s a start.
With the insane weather of this year — from record snowfalls in the winter to the downpours and heat of this weekend — the bay is poised to absorb a record-setting amount of pollution from runoff. Think of the toilet water,
sitting there for hours. Would you dive in? Maybe we’ll go to the pool, at least for this weekend.
Do you swim in the bay? E-mail me at
dvorakp@washpost.com.
You, too, could have home delivery. 1-800-753-POST SF
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