Jet Stream

The five-rocket launch scheduled for Wednesday night at NASA'sWallops Flight Facility is now slated for Sunday night -- but keep your eye on that launch schedule. The launch date has changed three times now: first to Friday night, then to Saturday night and now to Sunday night. If the weather still isn't right, the date could change again. The clear skies needed for launch also allow for a view of the rockets from across the East Coast. Observers will be able to see white clouds the rockets are emitting into the jet stream to help scientists study its wind patterns.

It drizzled on Earth Day. It poured on the Preakness Parade. Memorial Day was memorable mostly for the cold and rain. And yesterday's high temperature was the coolest May 26 on record in Baltimore.But if you think May has been a lot chillier and wetter than normal, think again."Everybody probably thinks it's been 4 to 5 degrees below normal this month, but it really hasn't," said Ken Shaver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.Instead, he predicted that May temperatures would wind up only 1 degree below average.

The glamour of the glorious times was gone.Little Bold John has competed at much more prestigious tracks, for much more money and against much more competition than faced him in the $16,000 allowance feature yesterday at Timonium Race Course.But to trainer Jerry Robb, Little Bold John's victory romp was another steppingstone toward a milestone."I'd like to reach that $2 million mark with him before we stop," said Robb after the all-time No. 3 money earner among Maryland-breds scored by 13 lengths over Jet Stream in a three-horse race.

Enough already.For nearly two months now, Marylanders have been stuck in a loop of chilly, dank weather that has robbed them of the sweet, balmy springtime they've come to expect."

Enough already.For nearly two months now, Marylanders have been stuck in a loop of chilly, dank weather that has robbed them of the sweet, balmy springtime they've come to expect."

If this is the dead of winter, the body is still warm. Temperatures at the airport rose to 72 degrees in hazy sunshine yesterday afternoon -- 30 degrees above normal -- as the region enjoyed the tail-end of a most un-wintry January. So far, only one day this winter, Dec. 30, has failed to warm past 32 degrees. And there has been just one measurable snowfall, a measly 2.3 inches Jan. 19 at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. But don't count on more of the same for February. "The truly heady, intoxicating days, we're having right now," said meteorologist Fred Gadomski of the Penn State Weather Communications Group.

At the tail end of the wettest and snowiest December on record, and topping off one of the city's wettest years, it looks like the area is in for more rain and snow before ringing in the new year. The National Weather Service is forecasting a 60 percent chance for a "wintry mix" of precipitation on New Year's Eve, continuing through the night. The area might see sunshine today, but the bad weather is expected to start as snow after 1 a.m., changing to freezing rain and then rain by Thursday afternoon.

The weeks of heavy rain that triggered historic flooding in northeast Australia this month have been blamed on what climatologists are now calling one of the strongest La Nina events in the Pacific Ocean since record-keeping began a half-century ago. La Nina's global influence is also being blamed for heavy rains in Indonesia and Brazil. But unusually persistent cold weather this winter in Maryland, and in much of the eastern United States, heavy December rains in Southern California, and snow across the Deep South are the work of separate weather patterns in the Arctic, scientists say. Called the Arctic, or North Atlantic, Oscillation, these air and ocean patterns have been unusually persistent for the second winter in a row, overwhelming weather "signals" from the tropical Pacific.

The Blizzard of '83 was just a gleam in a weatherman's eye the second Tuesday of that year's February, when a low-pressure system entered the country from the cold Pacific Ocean and resolutely headed for the Rocky Mountains.It was over northeastern Nevada by the next day, and the weather forecasters, poring over their charts and checking their computers, began to utter a U.S. Weather Service equivalent of "Uh-Oh." At noon Wednesday, the service issued a winter-storm watch for the East Coast.