B8 WEATHER Washington area today
The Capital Weather Gang’s forecast Tuesday will be sunnier, with highs near
90. Muggy overnight, with lows in the 70s. Wednesday and Thursday will be humid, with highs in the mid-90s. Afternoon thunderstorms are possible on both days. But take heart: Looking ahead, the weekend looks quite good.
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
Absent Low
Harrisburg Hagerstown
86/72 86/71
Baltimore 89/72
Washington 90/76
Richmond Charlottesville
94/68 92/71
Norfolk 88/73
Blue Ridge
•Today, partly sunny, afternoon thunderstorm. High 88-94. Wind south 4-8 mph. •Tonight, mostly cloudy, shower, thunderstorm. Low 59- 71. Wind light, variable. •Wednesday, partly sunny, afternoon thun- derstorm, shower. High 89-97.
Boating Forecast »
Virginia Beach 85/72
Recreational Forecast Atlantic beaches
•Today, partly sunny, humid. High 82-88. Wind south-southeast 6-12 mph. •Tonight, partly cloudy, humid. Low 72- 76. Wind south-southwest 7-14 mph. •Wednesday, partly sunny, shower or thunderstorm north, hot south. Wind southwest 8- 16 mph. High 87-93.
Upper Potomac River: Today, partly
sunny, humid, very warm. Wind south-southeast 10-20 knots. Waves 2 feet. Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay: Today, partly sunny, very warm, humid. Wind south-southeast 10-15 knots. Waves 2 feet on the Potomac and Chesapeake. River Stages: The river stage at Little Falls will be 2.6 feet today, holding steady Wednesday. Flood stage at Little Falls is 10 feet.
ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE Wake up each morning with an express forecast delivered to your inbox. To subscribe, text WEATHER to 98999.
Annapolis 85/74
Ocean City 86/74
Dover 88/74
Low
Ultra-Violet Index Air Quality Index
7 out of 11+, High
Yesterday’s main offender: Today: Moderate
Ozone, 37 The higher the UV Index number, the greater the need for eye and skin protection.
Philadelphia 89/72
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 90/66/t Anchorage 63/58/pc Atlanta 96/76/t
84/70/t 86/67/t 91/68/t 63/56/r 94/76/t
95/73/t
Tomorrow City Today Little Rock
Los Angeles
Austin 102/77/s 101/74/s Baltimore 89/72/pc Billings, MT
96/62/s 86/71/t
Tomorrow 84/55/t 81/55/pc
Birmingham 100/79/pc 98/78/t Bismarck, ND 86/60/s 82/56/pc Boise 94/60/s Boston 84/70/t Buffalo 86/71/t
85/70/pc
Burlington, VT 82/66/t 86/66/c Charleston, SC 91/74/t 91/75/pc Charleston, WV 96/70/pc 97/71/t Charlotte 92/72/t
96/74/t
Cheyenne, WY 80/58/t 83/54/t Chicago 89/74/t Cincinnati 98/72/s Cleveland 88/70/t
89/58/t
88/69/t 101/73/t 91/73/t
Dallas 106/82/s 104/81/s Denver 85/62/t Des Moines
Detroit 89/70/t El Paso
92/74/t 86/70/t 90/72/t
99/71/s 100/73/s
Fairbanks, AK 82/50/s 82/57/s Fargo, ND
Hartford, CT 84/71/t 89/69/t Honolulu 89/76/pc Houston 98/79/s Indianapolis 94/75/t Jackson, MS
86/65/s 82/57/pc
90/75/s 98/78/s 95/77/t
100/78/t 100/76/t
Jacksonville, FL 94/74/pc 93/74/pc Kansas City, MO 98/75/s 95/73/t Las Vegas
104/78/s 106/82/s
Louisville 96/77/s Memphis 102/81/s Miami 91/79/t Milwaukee 82/71/t Minneapolis 90/70/pc Nashville 100/78/s
102/79/s 103/78/pc 82/62/pc 80/62/pc 102/79/pc 102/80/pc 91/79/t
85/67/pc 89/67/pc 101/78/s
New Orleans 97/80/t 94/80/t New York City 87/75/pc 89/75/t Norfolk 88/73/pc 92/75/pc Oklahoma City 104/74/s 104/75/s Omaha 92/74/t Orlando 96/75/t Philadelphia 89/72/pc
89/69/t 93/76/t 92/75/t
Phoenix 105/85/pc 108/86/pc Pittsburgh 89/70/pc 90/72/t Portland, ME 80/64/t 85/64/t Portland, OR
84/59/pc 84/61/s
Providence, RI 86/70/t 86/71/t Raleigh, NC Reno, NV
Richmond 92/71/t Sacramento 92/52/s St. Louis
96/72/t 98/75/pc 94/56/s 96/56/s 97/74/t 88/52/s
98/77/s 98/77/t
St. Thomas, VI 90/80/sh 90/81/sh Salt Lake City 90/61/s 94/66/s San Diego
72/65/pc 69/65/pc
San Francisco 66/52/pc 63/52/pc San Juan, PR 89/78/sh 90/76/pc Seattle 78/58/pc 81/59/s Spokane, WA 88/60/s 91/62/s Syracuse 86/68/t Tampa 92/79/t Wichita 105/75/s
89/68/pc 93/79/t 98/73/s
NOTE: These are the predicted high/low temperatures and forecasts, through 5 p.m. Eastern time.
S
KLMNO Today Thunderstorms
90° 76°
Wind south 7-14 mph
American Forecast
FOR NOON TODAY
Seattle Portlan
SeattlSeattle Portland Sacramento Sacramento San Francisc
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 68/60/t 67/61/t Amsterdam 72/56/sh Athens 93/79/s Auckland 63/53/r Baghdad 115/79/s Bangkok 89/78/t Beijing 89/80/t Berlin 72/56/sh Bogota 64/45/t Brussels 74/53/sh
Tomorrow City Today Lisbon 94/66/s
67/53/sh 99/77/s 62/49/r 113/81/s 90/78/sh 91/73/t 75/62/s 65/46/t 69/50/r
Buenos Aires 50/30/pc 52/34/pc Cairo 104/78/s 103/76/s Caracas 84/73/t Copenhagen 72/54/sh
83/74/t 69/61/s
Dakar 89/79/pc 86/77/pc Dublin 66/52/pc Edinburgh 67/51/sh
Frankfurt 75/56/pc 78/60/pc Geneva
74/54/sh
Ho Chi Minh City 90/77/t 92/78/t Hong Kong
Islamabad 93/82/r Istanbul 94/79/s Jerusalem 88/69/s Johannesburg 72/39/s Kabul 87/67/t
97/82/t Lagos 83/74/s
Yesterday’s extremes (Continental U.S. only)
High: 109° Medicine Lodge, Kan. Low: 29° Stanley, Idaho
SOURCES:
AccuWeather.com; Walter Reed Army Medical Center (pollen data) ; Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; American Lung Association; National Weather Service.
64/50/pc 64/51/r
77/57/pc
Ham., Bermuda 86/77/sh 84/76/pc Helsinki 79/63/pc
73/55/pc
90/81/t 93/82/pc 92/80/t 94/80/s 87/69/s 68/40/s 93/67/t
Kingston, Jam. 89/80/sh 89/80/pc Kolkata
100/87/t 83/74/pc
Lima 70/57/pc 69/57/pc
London 75/55/sh Madrid 91/62/s Manila 88/78/r Mexico City
Montreal 79/68/t
Tomorrow 97/66/s
72/54/sh 93/64/s 84/78/t
77/55/t 77/57/t 82/66/pc
Moscow 95/67/pc 95/66/pc Mumbai 88/79/r
90/79/t
Nairobi 79/53/pc 80/54/pc New Delhi
92/80/t 92/80/r
Oslo 66/53/sh 69/50/sh Ottawa
80/69/t
Paris 75/57/s Prague 76/54/sh
84/67/pc 74/57/pc 76/58/s
Rio de Janeiro 76/68/s 75/67/sh Riyadh 102/78/s 102/81/s Rome 86/63/s Santiago 61/32/s
San Salvador 84/73/t 84/74/r Sarajevo
88/56/t
Seoul 88/76/s Shanghai 97/82/pc Singapore 89/79/t Stockholm 72/55/sh Sydney 63/45/c Taipei 95/81/s Tehran 86/72/s
76/55/t
90/74/sh 95/81/s 89/79/t
66/54/pc 63/45/pc 93/78/s 90/75/s
Tokyo 87/77/sh 88/77/s Toronto 85/69/t Vienna 79/66/pc Warsaw 83/57/r Yerevan 99/63/s
The world (excluding Antarctica)
High: 116° Quaisumah, Saudi Arabia Low: 3° Balmaceda, Chile
87/68/pc 79/63/s 67/55/pc 101/64/s
Rise Set
86/68/s 63/39/pc
Houston HoustoHouston MonterreMonterrey Monterrey
San Francisco Los Angele
San Francisco Los Angeles
Los Angeles Phoenix Phoenix Dalla Dallas Dallas Portland Calga Calgary Calgary Helena
Salt City
Salt La
Lake Ci
Lake City
ke Denver Denver Denve St. LouiSt. Louis St. Louis Atlanta Atlanta Atlant New OrleanOrleans New Orleans ew Charleston Charlesto Tamp Miami Miami Tampa Tampa Charleston Helena
Rapid Ci
Rapid City
City Winnipe Winnipeg Winnipeg
Chicago Mpl
ChicagChicago
Mpls.- St. Pau
St. Paul
St. Paul Mpls.-
s.- Ottaw Ottawa ttawa Boston Bosto Columbus Washington Columbus Washingto Washington Boston New Yor New York ew York PhiPhiladelphialadelphia
Wednesday Thunderstorms
95° 77°
Wind south-southwest 7-14 mph Thursday Thunderstorms
96° 78°
Wind south-southwest 10-20 mph Friday Partly sunny
92° 69°
Wind northwest 8-16 mph Saturday Mostly sunny
87° 68°
Wind north-northeast 8-16 mph
TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2010
News, traffi c, weather. Now.
POSTLOCAL
postlocal.com
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.
83° at 3:18 p.m. 71° at 6:34 a.m. 88°/70°
101° in 2006 55° in 1895
Trace 0.05” 0.22” 18.82” 23.04”
81% at 6:00 a.m. 57% at 5:00 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
30.15” 30.08”
Actual and f or ecast
THROUGH 5 P.M. YESTERDAY BWI
Dulles
82° at 3:08 p.m. 69° at 1:00 a.m. 88°/64°
99° in 2002 52° in 1998
0.04” 0.05” 0.22” 22.22” 24.67”
89% at 6:00 a.m. 62% at 4:00 p.m.
30.14” 30.08”
Normal Record
83° at 3:12 p.m. 71° at 7:00 a.m. 87°/66°
100° in 1955 55° in 1998
Trace 0.01” 0.24” 23.53” 24.83”
86% at 7:00 a.m. 53% at 3:00 p.m.
30.14” 30.07”
Apparent Temperature:
85°
(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 .............. 12 This month......... 22 This season .... 1301 Normal to yesterday ........ 926 Last season ...... 805
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
J
1:47 a.m. 9:07 a.m. 2:22 p.m. 8:48 p.m. 6:32 a.m. 11:04 a.m. 5:02 p.m.
none
1:23 a.m. 7:38 a.m. 2:06 p.m. 8:32 p.m. 3:13 a.m. 9:20 a.m. 3:50 p.m. 10:24 p.m.
Point Lookout 2:40 a.m. 7:08 a.m. 1:10 p.m. 8:27 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 6:11 a.m.
none 8:17 p.m. 2:27 p.m.
8:30 a.m. 9:25 p.m.
9:59 a.m. 10:13 p.m.
10:30 a.m. 10:31 p.m.
10:32 p.m. 10:38 a.m.
10:19 a.m. 10:35 p.m.
10:22 p.m. 10:24 a.m.
Aug 24 Full
PETULA DVORAK When the kids are away at camp, parents plan to play dvorak from B1
away to camp — insisted that webcams be installed in every cabin and on every pine tree, so they could remotely monitor little Emily’s lanyard making? “Yes, some of these parents still
have a hard time letting go, especially if they’re first-time campers,” said Lauran Walsh, office manager at North Bay Camp in Maryland. “Some of the calls I got, even today, they want to talk to the kids, they want to ask how they’re doing. For some, it’s hard.” But plenty of North Bay
veterans “drop them off and can’t get out of here fast enough,” Walsh told me. The pendulum may be swinging back a bit, thank goodness. Maybe we’re not “Mad
Men” ready to have our little Sally mix daddy’s drink, but it’s about time that more parents learn to live it up a bit more. I got wind of this healthier approach to parenting just a couple of months ago, when my stable of mommy friends began posting some outrageous Facebook status updates and photos. It was like college again! Concerts, bar scenes, romantic sailing trips, frolics on the beach. What was going on? “I love camp. Bad Mommy,” wrote one very involved and terrific mom who clearly had no problems reconnecting with her pre-kid persona. Another mom, Meg Smith, who has three kids and lives in Alexandria, was a little timid about filling me in on her greatest kids-away-at-camp
adventure. “Umm. Jamaica. We went to
Jamaicaaaaah,” she whispered, before waiting a moment to decide whether to trust me with the rest of her debauchery. “With some adult friends, who also didn’t have their kids with them.” Gasp! “I have a friend who just gets a hotel with her husband downtown, just to pretend they’re away,” said Smith, who is so down with the benefits of stay-away camp life that she scouts out camps for an agency, Tips on Trips and Camps. My children are too young for
sleep-away camp, but this summer they are attending Camp Grandma for a week. No fancy trip or exotic getaway for us; we’re working. But wait a minute. It’s going to
be a whole week of just one job, not two! I found myself immediately on the computer checking concert schedules and restaurant reviews.
Oh. I am old. I don’t recognize
a single band playing at the Rock and Roll Hotel. But at the 9:30 Club, a nostalgia act — Public Enemy. Sold! We’re planning movie nights, dinner dates and get-togethers with our childless friends, all deliciously within reach and without the tick-tock of the babysitter time clock. Woo-hoo!
Of course, I can’t resist the chance to knock a couple of things off my perpetual to-do list. I’m going to finally, once and for all, paint over the baby blue in the nursery, turn it into a home
office, clean the closets, donate the baby clothes. Painting the house is probably closer to reality for most parents with kids away for a week or two, said Hilary Bradley, who runs a catering business from her home in Herndon. “We have these visions of romantic evenings in the summer. Ha! It’s really just a time to catch up,” Bradley said about the big plans she has when her 11- and 13-year-old kids are off to camp for a week. “I mean, we finally get to eat the food we like. No more pizza and chicken nuggets.” For some, the luxury of slowing down is enough.
Sure, one of her camper’s parents went to Peru after dropping the kids off, said Barbara Smeeringer, registrar at
River Valley Ranch in Maryland. But just as memorable is the stay-at-home mom who found inner peace on a less exotic outing.
“She called to tell me what a
great day she had. She treated herself to Chic-fil-A, went shopping, had such a wonderful time alone,” Smeeringer said. Peru? Jamaica? Sea urchin
ceviche? “The possibilities are endless.
Think about it, a week without them!” I told my husband the other day. “Um-hmmm,” he said, over his laptop. Something tells me the best
we’re going to do is painting that nursery. Maybe.
Are you planning to live it up when the kids are away? E-mail me at dvorakp@
washpost.com.
As players tend virtual farms, game companies reap millions games from B1
an early Internet entrepreneur, game developer and armchair gaming historian. If that sounds like blasphemy, consider that online games just passed e-mail as the second-most popular activity online, behind social networking, according to Nielsen. Last week, Disney paid $563.2million to buy social game developer Playdom. Google is re- portedly in talks with game com- panies to start a site called Goo- gle Games, having noticed that on Facebook, the fastest-growing Web site in the world, 40 percent of the company’s 500 million us- ers regularly play social games. In olden days, games were
played in the living room. Chess. Battleship. Monopoly. Then the world changed. The family nucle- us dispersed, especially up and down the information superhigh- way. Online gaming first gained popularity with those adults-liv- ing-in-the-basement types. But now, through smartphones and Facebook, where users tend to imaginary plots of land in Farm- Ville or hire friends to run eater- ies in Restaurant City, games are mainstream again. Many players are using games such as FarmVille and Scrabble to make new friends. Through the
Words With Friends app, Shields got love-life advice from a fifty- something divorcee in Washing- ton state. She plays about 20 games a day.
Where adults can play The demographic profile of to-
day’s gamers cuts across genders and age groups, although middle- age women are disproportionate- ly represented in game use on Facebook. People play at work, on their commutes, at lunch, on the couch, in their pajamas — plow- ing crops, waiting on tables, building words, often in bursts lasting no longer than five min- utes.
If you think the people next to
you at Starbucks are taking a break from spreadsheets to look at pictures of cousins’ adorable newborns on Facebook, you’re probably wrong. They are prob- ably icing friends on Mafia Wars. “Games have always faced a
sort of puritanical challenge in this country, that they are okay to play as kids but weird as adults,” said Mia Consalvo, who research- es games at MIT. “But play is a fundamental part of our lives. And now, with these social games, many people who weren’t gamers have an outlet again to play games as adults.” That’s largely because social
games on Facebook and smart- phones hearken back to a simpler time, when games were easy to play. Board games, card games — who needed to read the instruc- tions? As families spread apart and technology improved, games became, often on computers or gaming consoles, more solitary and complicated. They required users to play hour after hour. Hand-eye coordination became essential. Today’s popular pursuits are not your weird cousin’s games. Now, on Facebook, Scrabble is as simple as the original 1948 game played on cardboard. The most popular game on the site, Farm- Ville, requires clicking around an imaginary farm to plant crops and take care of animals. In Hap- py Aquarium, another popular Facebook game, users feed fish and clean tanks. Millions of wom- en throw parties together on So- rority Life. Guys can act out their Tony Soprano fantasies by cap- ping people throughout the day in Mafia Wars. For Facebook and the gaming companies, the business opportu- nity is enormous, even though playing the games is free. Users can buy add-ons and move through game levels faster by spending a dollar here, 50 cents there on what amount to nothing
more than virtual objects on a screen. Analysts predict more than $835 million in such trans- actions this year. “In some respects, I think this is the most viable business model that has come along for social networks, even better than adver- tising,” Radoff said.
Looking for human links
The games can be played across platforms — if you’re away from your computer and your wheat needs to be harvested, you can do the work on your iPhone. A simple text message tells you when it’s time. The most popular social games are collaborations. To progress quickly through the games, you need to help other players, and they need to help you. Such col- laborations, according to game designers and users, foster a sense of community in an often- splintered world. For years, computers seemed to split us apart, atomizing life by dividing us into ever-narrower niches; now it appears they are linking us back together, digital acre by acre. “You can call this silly, but we
don’t really do things together anymore, things that give you a sense of accomplishment,” said Cadir Lee, chief technology offi-
cer for Zynga, the company be- hind FarmVille. “It’s not like we are raising barns together in our communities anymore. The clos- est thing we have to that is help- ing people move. And even now, we would probably just hire a mover.” The idea of doing something —
anything — together with her family is what drew Mary Jane Grutzmacher to Facebook. Grutz- macher, who is 59 and lives in Ellicott City, did not join to catch up with old high school friends. Rather, she saw her son playing FarmVille. It looked easy. And it looked like a way for them to con- nect. Now she plays a few times a day with him, her sister-in-law, her nieces, and even the adminis- trative assistant at her office. “I like to tend to the animals,” she said. “I really like animals. My son likes the crops.” She paused and laughed. “I mean, it’s just pix- els, but it’s fun. It’s nice to do something fun with family and hear about what they’re up to that way.”
But game designers are push- ing users to expand their playing partners well beyond their family and real friends. To broaden the reach of their wares — and let’s face it, make more real-world cash — game makers are quickly adding functions that make it
easier for players to expand be- yond their social networks and match up against random play- ers.
Like Scrabble, Words With
Friends offers that chance, which is how Shields hooked up with Victoria Rappin. “We were play- ing and I think she said, ‘So where are you from?’ ” Shields said.
“She’s on the East Coast and
I’m on the West Coast, and I’m menopausal so I can’t sleep half the time,” said Rappin, who is in the nuts and bolts business. “We struck up a nice little relation- ship.”
“I had my heart ripped out in
May, and she gave me advice about my love life,” Shields said. “She was very sweet about it. I really appreciated it.” They even bonded over illness, Rappin said: “She had mono, and I had mono, too, a long time ago, and so I told her to take it easy, to not overdo it.” The two have never spoken by phone, but both said they would miss each other if the game went away. Told that this reporter would be chatting with Rappin, Shields said, “Please tell her hello from me . . . and that I feel like we’re good friends and I hope that her garden is doing well.”
rosenwaldm@washpost.com
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