Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 3,000 times.....agghhh!

The National Weather Service has forecast an 80% likelihood of rain in Washington DC this Sunday. They're right; it's going to rain hereabouts. It's just not going to rain at the Arboretum or in Adelphi.

To look at that front moving east, you'd think that in the city, we'd be expecting some rain. "Expecting" would be the key word. That front stretches from Mississippi to Canada. No matter. We won't be getting it. You can see where it's beginning to break up at the western edge of West Virginia. I wish I had the radar from yesterday before that break began to appear.

It's not as though it'll end up being a big opening. Typically areas 20 miles north of us get heavy rain; the same 30 miles south. Often, as the front passes the city and approaches the open waters of Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac River, the moisture generates precipitation, even thunderstorms, so that the rain has, in essence, opened a gap for Washington and then reformed 20 miles to the east, as soon as it gets past the city! My friend Pat has suggested the culprit is a "heat island effect" related to the fact that Washington DC is a gateway to Hell. I think it has more to do with the specific topography of the Appalachians but it's still tantalizingly frustrating. Agghh!!!

We go through this scenario many many times every summer. I ougha learn but there's always a little ray of hope