For those who do keep their finger on the world pulse, tomorrow is World Malaria Day (April 25th), sponsored by the World Health Organization. While Spring is here, and the standing water from the heavy rains a few days ago will sure spawn our favorite Summer pest, the mosquito, it’s good to remember, that here, in the US, we’re lucky enough not to have the scourge of malaria, one of the largest killers of people, young and old, worldwide. So, as a reminder, since we do get other mosquito borne illness here, notably the West Nile Virus, if you have standing water pooling on your property, in buckets, plastic sheeting, or other places that seem innocuous, tip it out and drain it. (Remember, D.C. used to be a swamp, so it makes sense…)

On the upside, Senegalese singer, Youssou N’Dour is performing at the World Bank in the atrium at 2pm. I’m not sure if it’s fully open to the public, but you can try, given that it’s supposed to raise awareness…it’d be dumb to restrict access.

Here they are.

That’s the inside of what our friends call our “Chester the child molester van,” but what we simply call “big red.” Receding into the distance is the Hyattsville Pepsi bottling plant, where these 4 food-grade barrels came from. Two are 55 gallons, two are 30 gallons. All are intended to go around the edge of my house to be used as rain barrels, though we may end up not making use of them all.

Pepsi charges a nominal $5 per barrel fee to sell them to you, which is a steal compared to what you’d pay a commercial outfit. In fairness, I’m going to have to put on the necessary attachments myself before they can be used, to say nothing about washing out some leftover syrup sludge. Unless you can tell me for sure that tomato plants and daffodils are fans of lemon-lime, that is.

If you’re not quite as cheap & handy as I am (in that order) you can pick up barrels from the Arlington Echo Outdoor Education Center. $60 is more than the $5 plus parts and time I’ll spend, but you won’t have to show up in Hyattsville at 6:30am to be assured of getting one either.

If you like to walk the path less traveled sensible as I do, instructions for making a barrel are provided here by the Maryland Environmental Design Program or you can use the contact link and ask the Fairfax Country Conservation District program to contact you the next time they run a rain barrel construction workshop.

If you’re thinking this sounds a little too hippie-dippy for you, I had some initial qualms about that as well. However I pretty much made up my mind to do it because of two things. One of them is probably unique to me: the previous tenants in our house left behind a number of soaker hoses, so we’d like to make use of them. The other factor I am sure applies to you as well: water is expensive. Since Arlington - and many regions -  base our sewer bill on our water consumption, we don’t just pay the $3.34 for each 1,000 gallons we pour out onto our lawn and garden - we also pay an additional $5.86 to cover the cost of spiriting it away down the drain and off to the stinky water  treatment plant… even though there’s no drain in our vegetable garden.

So if I put all 4 of my barrels to use, that’ll be a combined 170 gallons of water on hand to use rather than the $1.56 worth that comes out of the tap. Not a money saver right out the door, but combined with the lazyness factor of letting the soaker hoses do the work without any accompanying worry about them rupturing and costing me money, I think it’ll be worth it.

Besides, it’s yet another do it yourself project I can add to my overstocked pile. What more could I ask for?

That’s the Weather Service Bureau Identification for the Tornado Watch that’s been underway since 5:50 tonight and is in effect until 3am. The real part of the rain is supposed to hit tonight after 9pm, and that’s probably when we’ll see a lot of the chance to see tornadic activity here in the DC area. So, be careful out there, and be sure to check various news sources before you hit the sack tonight.

Here’s the pertinent part of the Watch:

DISCUSSION…VERY INTENSE VERTICAL MOTION FIELDS AND LOW/DEEP LAYER SHEAR WILL OVERSPREAD THIS REGION THROUGH TONIGHT AS STRONG UPPER SYSTEM BEGINS TO LIFT NEWD ACROSS THE APPALACHIANS. ALTHOUGH INSTABILITY WILL REMAIN MEAGER…MOISTENING LOW LEVELS CONCURRENT WITH 70+ KT SLY LLJ WILL ENHANCE THE POTENTIAL FOR LOW LEVEL ROTATION AND POSSIBLE TORNADOES. ACTIVITY MAY OCCUR IN TWO BANDS…ONE NOW MOVING INTO CENTRAL NC/VA AND ANOTHER SPREADING ENEWD ALONG THE MAIN COLD FRONT LATER TONIGHT. SEVERE/TORNADO THREAT MAY PERSIST WELL INTO THE NIGHT UNTIL THE LATER BAND MOVES OFFSHORE.

If you spot a tornado, please seek shelter.

Might be a reasonable question to have when you first see this post on Capital Weather, but as it turns out the more appropriate question might be “what does the Smithsonian do with weather?” The answer is, apparently, not much.

The information presented in the exhibit stands in direct contrast not only to current climate science but also to other information that the museum has published.

[snip]

One of the panels of text in the ice ages exhibit is entitled “The Future” and states, “the minor global cooling trend of recent decades, with its attendant shifts in wind and rainfall patterns, is being carefully watched and studied. Already the effects on food production are severe in many parts of the world…”

Global cooling is typically something that climate change contrarians talk about, not the Smithsonian.

As it turns out, the culprit here is not the Smithsonian deliberately engaging in falsehoods, but rather simply failing to notice the old exhibit. Andrew quotes Smithsonian employee Bill Fitzhugh as saying they simply forgot the exhibits were there and contained that information.

It’s an interesting dilemma for the Smithsonian divisions that do more than simply display prior art, and presumably goes beyond just the science-minded stuff. What about text attached to, say, a painter’s biography if new information comes to light about their work or life? I hope this publicity goads the Smithsonian to add some ongoing oversight to their exhibits. Perhaps a project similar to the LoC’s Flickr project could put all the exhibit text in a format that people could view other than when they happen to be in front of it, improving the odds of finding antiquated info.

Photo by Ehpien

A Grill at Adams Morgan Day …because the weather is perfect for the beginning of cook-with-fire season. Tom and I inaugurated grilling season last night with some steak and grilled zucchini… and this morning I have the red wine headache to show for it.I hope you’re all enjoying the beautiful weather, and many thanks to Flickr user ohad* for uploading this photo to the Metroblogging DC Flickr Pool.

My representation of the total snow output resulting from this snow advisory.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. We know that not everyone has a special someone, but today, know that we here at Metblogs love you. Yes, even you creepy stalker girl. And you, too, Poo Poo.

Another Crazy Lawsuit

Except that this time, it’s Best Buy being sued, and not a Dry Cleaners. A woman is suing Best Buy for $54 million for losing her laptop. She took it to the Tenleytown Best Buy for repair, and they promptly lost her laptop. Of course, they bought her a new laptop and she got a $500 gift card for her trouble. But that apparently wasn’t enough. So she’s suing. For $54M. Ridiculous. C’mon people, this is stupid.

VDOT Says “Oops, My Bad”

VDOT is apologizing for their complete fuckup on the roads on Tuesday night, that ended up shutting down multiple interchanges on the Beltway due to ice. However, really what they’re doing is putting the blame on the weather forecast, which is a load of horseshit, and Bob Marbourg from WTOP is calling them out: “We would only hope that the highway departments would put the forecasts down, look at the real time temperatures and look at the radar off in the distance and anticipate, ‘Hey, the forecast is going out the window.’”

United Stadium at Poplar Point?

Looks like the City wants to keep its only good sports team after all. The City is floating a proposal for a 27,000 seat soccer stadium at Poplar Point, costing between $150-230M, which is chump change in comparison to the new Nationals stadium. If successful, it’d be the largest publicly funded soccer venue in MLS history.

Happily the overnight temps weren’t so low as to keep this kind of spectacle in place for this morning. This car was parked near mine when I left work around 7:30 last night and the photo doesn’t really do justice to the krispy kreme look all the vehicles had. It was an real flashback for me to my visit up here for a conference in the late 90s, when a severe ice storm left my rental car so encased in ice that I had to kick the door repeatedly to get it so it could open.

And yes, if you’re wondering, when the car is that frozen, so is the ground underneath it… which makes for some real entertainment when someone is on one foot repeatedly kicking an immovable object. Or at least my friend thought so - my ass was less convinced.

I wanted to go to class tonight. I did. We were talking about a book that I had strong opinions about, that I spent a lot of time thinking about. However, the 7-mile drive from home to the Virginia Tech campus was not to be. I knew I was in trouble when the intersection of Route 7 and my street was backed up and not moving. I gave it my all, but when after 80 minutes in the car I wasn’t a mile from home, I gave up and turned around.

The roads are downright awful out there tonight. Parts of the Beltway are closed. Several major interchanges are closed due to horrific ice, there are 20 car pileups and there’s an ice storm warming until tomorrow morning at 7, it’s just pretty freakin’ awful out there.

I know you’ve probably got awful stories, please relay them in the comments.

image courtesy of National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

Capital Weather passes on this bit of information: you’re going to get wet. Very.

It’s hard to imagine as I look out the window into a sunny and nice day, but projections indicate we’re going to get a metric ass-ton of rain dumped on us in the next 24 hours. Estimates are in the 1 inch and up range. Happily the expectation is we’ll follow it up with some sunny and above-average temps for the weekend. So run through your Netflix queue tonight and tomorrow and plan for some out-of-doors activities on Saturday.