Nats halt the losing streak

Which losing streak was this, again? There have been so many... Beating the Orioles 9-5, Hernandez came up with a novel way to turn his pitching around:

Livan Hernandez finally figured a way out of his funk, opting for a post-midnight movie at his neighborhood theater over a good night's sleep the night before his start.

Hernandez won for the first time in four starts, Royce Clayton hit a three-run double and the Washington Nationals snapped a five-game losing streak with a 9-5 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday.

"You believe it or not, (but) I go to the movies last night -- 1 o' clock in the morning, 12:15," Hernandez said. "The new movie, Tourismo, and I watch a movie and I go home at like 2:45 in the morning. I'm not going to do it every time, but I got to do something different..."

Seems to have worked. Midnight movies for everyone!   Baseball   0 comment(s)   Add a comment...

 Bad rains; Inconvenient Truth

It was a bad night here:

Fierce Storms Cause Heavy Flooding, Outages [WP]

...torrents of rain deluged much of the Washington area last night, turning roads into rapids, stranding motorists in perilous currents and plunging more than 30,000 homes into darkness.

As the electrical storms of a long and rain-soaked weekend reached a crescendo last night, at least one house fire was touched off by lightning, other lightning strikes were reported and the number of customers who lost power at some point in the past three days rose to about 100,000.

As midnight approached, water shut down much of Metro's rail system, traffic trying to reach the Woodrow Wilson Bridge was at a standstill and Reagan National Airport staff members handed out blankets to the stranded.

With rain falling on waterlogged ground at a rate of two inches an hour in some spots -- matching totals for a month or more -- rescuers pulled shaken motorists from rising water on numerous roadways from Maryland to Virginia.

Moreover, forecasters said they expected the area to remain in the grip of the same atmospheric conditions, making more rain and thunder possible through midweek.

The Beltway's closed by a mudslide at the moment (aha, just reopened).

National Airport has had 2x the typical total rainfall for June in the last 48 hours. And more is coming this week.

We haven't lost power and are otherwise fine (though unable to easily reach certain parts of town).

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Coincidentally, we saw An Inconvenient Truth yesterday, which talks about the noticeable increase in climate volatility over the last decade, its demonstrable connection to human activity, and the changes we can and should make in response.

As Roger Ebert & the returned Medley say, this is as "must-see" a film as there ever has been. Failing that, at least explore the movie's site.

Reviewer MaryAnn Johanson:

...amazingly, An Inconvenient Truth isn�t a political film, not really, even if the debate about global climate change has come down to �sides� in the same idiotic way that the debate about evolution has, in the same way that the debate about heliocentricity once was. Because you don�t need to like Gore, or trust him, or even believe him to get a swift kick in the pants, one that�ll scare the hell out of you...

  Local News / Weather