Normal

Randy Chabot is a refrigeration contractor, recently transplanted from Michigan to Ellicott City. He wrote last year, amazed and wilted by our Chesapeake summers. Now he's fretting about summer 2007: "My interest ... is not just about comfort, but financial also." The feds' Climate Prediction Center says we're in for a warmer-than-normal summer, with equal chances for above- or below-normal rainfall. Hurricane forecasters warn of a busier 2007 season, with several East Coast landfalls. You'll be busy.

Yesterday marked the end of the three-month meteorological winter, and we got off easy. December and January each averaged about 6 degrees above normal at BWI-Marshall, with less than an inch of snow. That changed in February. We managed only a few days of above-normal temperatures, suffered steep utility bills and 8.5 inches of snow at BWI. That's barely half the average winter's snowfall, so we've escaped the worst. So far. Remember, March has produced two of Baltimore's 10 deepest snowstorms.

So far, so good.With December and January past, Baltimore's winter weather has performed as predicted -- mild, with fewer snowstorms than normal.January ended with an average temperature of 35.1 degrees -- 3.3 degrees above normal at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.December was milder, averaging 4.3 degrees warmer than normal. National Weather Service statisticians regard December, January and February as the official winter months.January's temperatures ranged from a low of 7 degrees to a high of 68 degrees, but no records were set; December's from 9 degrees to 77 degrees.

The rains that drenched the Baltimore area over the weekend were well above normal for September, and they put a dent in Maryland's long-standing drought. But they didn't finish it off entirely."We'll need our regular rainfall, plus 10 more inches," said Dewey Walston, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Sterling, Va.The weather service recorded 2.34 inches of rain Sunday and Monday at Baltimore-Washington International Airport. That figure is well above the normal six-tenths of an inch for this point in September, but doesn't make up for the area's long-standing rainfall deficit.

Only in the context of its neighborhood can the store's name be read without irony.The corner at 31st Street and Greenmount Avenue, where Charles Village gets squeamish and Waverly takes over, is home to a puzzling assortment of businesses, including the city's dusty Communist Party headquarters ("No loitering within 100 feet"), a vegetarian tearoom and "history exchange" open two days a week by appointment, the furniture workers' union, a Baptist church and a no-name bar.Like so many rabbit holes waiting for their respective Alices, each hints at a different, unguessable subculture.

It was the perfect way to celebrate the eve of the first anniversary of the Blizzard of 1996.As Marylanders swarmed outdoors to jog, bike, walk and simply enjoy the bright sunshine, yesterday's 69-degree high in Baltimore broke the record. It was the second time in three days that a record was set.Hope you enjoyed it, because the springlike weather is about to give way to more traditional winter temperatures."We had a three-day spring break, and that's going to be coming to an end overnight tonight," said Brian Smith, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Sterling, Va. Smith said that a cold front is expected to bring more seasonably low temperatures to the Baltimore region today.

MERCIFULLY free of world attention, the people of Dunblane, Scotland are now going about the hard work of getting back to normal -- or as normal as life can be after a tragedy as unimaginable as the massacre of 5- and 6-year-old schoolchildren by an aggrieved misfit.Meanwhile, with the approach of the one-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, memories will resurface of another horror in which the deaths of children are embedded in the public mind.Trauma, the preferred technical term for these horrific events, takes a toll on anyone.

Shooing her father outside and closing the door behind him, Anna Paquin is just a normal teen-ager looking for a little privacy."I don't need anybody to hold my hand," she says.There's no trace of the tongue-tied little girl from New Zealand gasping for breath at the podium three years ago after winning an Academy Award for "The Piano.""Oh, I look pretty much the same, except for my hair," she deadpans, proud of the hip, short blocky style that has replaced traditional flowing girlish locks.

You miss it, don't you?You turn on the radio, but Bob Dole is not there, shouting everything THREE TIMES, THREE TIMES, THREE TIMES!You turn on the television, and Connie DeJuliis and her "Robert Ehrlich is Clueless" commercials have vanished.You stare at the telephone. It's silent. No pollsters, volunteers or candidates begging for your time.Take a deep breath. You can get through this. Like a combat warrior, you have been on a long and harrowing journey. You're a survivor of Campaign '96. And you've got the post-election blues.

Manager Davey Johnson sat in his office outside the Orioles' clubhouse yesterday afternoon and joked with each passing player.Johnson's accelerated heartbeat, which kept him in the hospital on Thursday and forced him to miss a game, was back to normal.He traded barbs with Bill Ripken. Recently acquired reliever Terry Mathews left his first meeting with his new manager doubled over with laughter.Everything was fine, except for the doctor-ordered mandate of no more coffee or tobacco, two of Johnson's favorite vices.

Ah, spring in Baltimore. I used to think it had arrived when I saw the first lacrosse stick of the season, or maybe when the first tulips sprouted in Sherwood Gardens. But now I think I've identified the ultimate sign that spring has sprung in these parts: People start squabbling over Mount Vernon Place's lovely green squares and just how to enjoy them without, um, actually walking all over them. On Thursday, the city threw up a virtual keep-off-the-grass sign on Mount Vernon's west park, forcing WTMD radio station to cancel its First Thursday concert that evening.

Parents and teenagers are walking around this week awed by the violence that destroyed the Browning family in Cockeysville - one of those events that are so shocking we all look at each other and wait for someone to make some sense of it. But there is no sense to it, and the explanation might never come. All you are allowed to assume, based on your experience as a human being, is that a 15-year-old boy had to be deeply troubled to do such a thing, and people seem so understanding of this, already speaking of forgiveness and "poor Nicholas."

Chazz Ludwin of Rosedale wonders: "When and how were the original normal temperatures obtained? And does it take into account the weather patterns in the years/centuries before?" "Normal" suggests weather "as it should be." We should say "average," which implies variation is normal. For Baltimore, the National Weather Service uses a 30-year average of BWI temperatures, recalculated every decade. The current averages are based on 1971 to 2000. The next, beginning in 2011, will use data from 1981 to 2010.

Randy Chabot is a refrigeration contractor, recently transplanted from Michigan to Ellicott City. He wrote last year, amazed and wilted by our Chesapeake summers. Now he's fretting about summer 2007: "My interest ... is not just about comfort, but financial also." The feds' Climate Prediction Center says we're in for a warmer-than-normal summer, with equal chances for above- or below-normal rainfall. Hurricane forecasters warn of a busier 2007 season, with several East Coast landfalls. You'll be busy.

Yesterday marked the end of the three-month meteorological winter, and we got off easy. December and January each averaged about 6 degrees above normal at BWI-Marshall, with less than an inch of snow. That changed in February. We managed only a few days of above-normal temperatures, suffered steep utility bills and 8.5 inches of snow at BWI. That's barely half the average winter's snowfall, so we've escaped the worst. So far. Remember, March has produced two of Baltimore's 10 deepest snowstorms.

Bob "Hutch" Hutchinson writes from Timonium with a question about rainfall: "Now that we're ending another year with a precipitation surplus, I was wondering, how much is the total surplus since the end of the last great dought?" I assume you're referring to the record Maryland drought that ended in October 2002, with just 57 percent of normal moisture over 11 1/2 months. Annual surpluses since then total almost 33 inches. That's a bonus for the region equal to 78 percent of a normal year's rain.

Natural gas posted its biggest price decline in three months in New York as mild weather blanketed the United States from Chicago to the East Coast at a time when demand for the fuel typically rises. Temperatures will remain above normal across the biggest gas-consuming regions, covering most of the eastern half of the United States through Jan. 4, MDA Federal's EarthSat Energy Weather forecaster said yesterday. Mild weather has trimmed demand for supplies stored in underground caverns that utilities draw on to meet the winter heating needs of customers.

I help coach a 9U baseball travel team where we've found that our boys fade in late games at big tournaments. It has more to do with mental lapses than physical fatigue. Can mental toughness and focus be taught or coached at this age, or is it just a matter of waiting for these boys to mature? Dan Markim, Austin, Texas DEAR DAN / / I think you hit it right on the head with your last statement. Sometimes in the quest to provide our kids with opportunities to improve and allow them to play more games, we put them in situations that they are not mentally and emotionally prepared to handle.

Officially, winter has another week to run in Baltimore. But it felt more like summer yesterday as the temperature soared to 84 degrees. Shorts and shirtsleeves appeared like blossoms on the streets, along with a few eager trees and bulbs that burst into flower. The high at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport climbed 31 degrees above the long-term average for the date. But it was not quite enough to topple the record of 85 degrees, set March 13, 1990. The unseasonable heat caps a roller-coaster winter that probably will fade into the record books looking unremarkably average.

The National Weather Service bulletin said it all with telegraphic brevity: "March coming in like a lamb." After a winter many will recall as snowy and stubbornly cold, February melted into history yesterday. It was one leap day late in departing, but left with a brilliant flourish of springlike sunshine and 65-degree temperatures. The weather drew thousands to Baltimore's waterfront, many in short pants, short sleeves and sunglasses they hadn't worn in months. "We got our bikes out of the basement and got some lunch out here by the water," said Aaron Chambers, 27, a Johns Hopkins medical student.