Photo by Bogotron

Good morning, Washington. Hopefully you’ve all dried out by now from Saturday night’s impressive storm – the one The Washington Post says might have caused a $700,000 fire in Silver Spring and officially increased our annual rainfall to 0.23 inches above normal. I was at Nationals Park that night, and the sudden downpour (which eventually forced the officials to call the game after fewer than six full innings) was really a spectacle in and of itself. Watching the sky fill up all at once with those massive, seemingly endless raindrops through the the stadium lights was as beautiful as it was wet. What does this week have in store for us? It may be cool again today, but looks like we’ll be in the 80s again before you know it.

Where is Adrian Fenty? D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is out of town again, and like usual, he didn’t let the public know where we was going beforehand, WTOP reports. Turns out he and eight D.C. Council members are all in Las Vegas to attend the International Shopping Center Convention – a perfectly legitimate mayoral trip – so why any secrecy at all? Fenty’s schedule includes no public events for Sunday or Monday. Colbert I. King thinks Fenty has become too arrogant. The best we can say is that at least his office is actually answering questions from reporters about where the mayor is this time.

Will the Bag Tax Really Work? The D.C. Council is set to take up a five cent tax on plastic bags given out by retailers at the end of the month. But would the tax actually do what it is intended to do – namely clean up much of garbage from the Anacostia River? D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi says yes, and right quick, too. The Examiner reports on Gandhi’s new projections, which indicate the tax would actually decrease plastic bag use by 80 percent within four years. That’s a pretty staggering estimate. The legislation appears to have the votes it needs to pass the Council when it comes back to work.

Briefly Noted: D.C. settless lawsuit against car title lenders … Preakness Party attendance way down … Man’s body found in Potomac … Montgomery County police officer sued over dog bite.

This Day in DCist: In 2007, we got prepared to feeeeeeel the impact of Digestive Disease Week.