16-06-2025
Somewhere the sun was shining Sunday, just not in Washington
Somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright, as the old poem goes, but on Sunday that somewhere seemed not to be in the District, where it was implacably overcast all the day long.
The poem, of course, is 'Casey at the Bat,' but it seemed unlikely that any sports failure caused the gloomy skies above the capital on Sunday. Even though the local major league baseball team, the Washington Nationals, lost again.
It seemed more likely that the gray clouds that loomed over the city from morning to night resulted from meteorological, rather than athletic or psychological reasons.
But it certainly seemed to be a day solidly stocked with clouds. A day of gray dimness, from horizon to horizon, with overcast still to spare. And it was a cool day, too.
The high temperature in D.C. was deceptive, seeming warmer than the day was. The official high was 72 degrees, which is fairly cool itself. But that 72- degree reading was a kind of stealth high, which stole into the record books only six minutes after midnight.
That is not typically the time when days are at their warmest. It was more an inheritance from Saturday than a temperature representative of Sunday. Or of the last days of spring.
Even the 72 degrees was 13 below the average high for the 15th of June in Washington. And most of the daylight hours were cooler, characterized by readings in the middle or high 60s. So it was a cool and cloudy day in the District, a day that seemed to reflect the weather experiences of other times and places.
The existence of the sun, the powerful, searching sun of June, demanded to be taken on faith rather than direct observation.
A layer of cloud, about two miles up, proved effective in hiding the sun from view, and probably in confining the temperature to its low levels.
It turns out, however, that just as asserted in the poem, somewhere in America the sun was indeed shining bright.
Television showed a sunshiny day in Portland, Oregon, to name one such somewhere. Portland's hometown Thorns played the Spirit, which represents the District, in a televised National Women's Soccer League game.
Once again, 'our' team met defeat. But for partisans of June sunshine, of whatever athletic affiliation, the setting of the match, the atmospherics and atmosphere, seemed to be a win.
