Photo by aliciagriffin

Good morning, Washington. It’s real damn cold out there today—the Capital Weather Gang included a link to Extreme Cold Tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their morning forecast (Highs in the upper 20s! Wind-chill in the low teens!), so you know it’s not just regular winter weather whining on our part to bring up the chill. Are we now close enough to have an accurate prediction for Inauguration Day weather? Not really. Why? Because the dirty secret of weather prediction is that no one know anything for sure until the day before.

Review Clears Charter Board Leader: The Post reports that a review by Attorney General Peter Nickles has determined that public charter school board chairman Thomas Nida did not violate the law by being involved in city government deals that were financed by his bank. Nickles did call on the charter board to adopt more stringent ethics rules “to avoid potential problems in the future.”

District to Probe Hospital Error Reporting: The Examiner reports that District Department of Health executive Feseha Woldu told the D.C. Council that the department is launching an investigation into whether the city’s hospitals and clinics are withholding reports of serious medical errors. A recent report showed that many hospitals and nursing homes hadn’t turned in any information about doctors’ errors or machine failures.

Briefly Noted: … 750 hotel rooms still available in D.C. … Couple found murdered in Upper Marlboro … Two die, 4 saved after boat capsizes off Va. … Suspect in Silver Spring slaying is charged with murder.

This Day in DCist: In 2008, we first learned that the citywide call center number would change to 311, and in 2007, we thought the District’s tributes to Martin Luther King Jr. needed improvements.