Washington weather, explained by a local pattern
DC's summers are legendarily swampy — high humidity feeding late-day thunderstorms that scatter across the region — while spring's cherry-blossom window is short, precious, and weather-dependent enough that the bloom forecast is front-page news. Fall is long and reliable, the best season for anything on the Mall.
How to use this page
The verdict above reads the next 12 hours of official National Weather Service hourly data for central Washington and reduces it to one answer. The bar chart underneath shows the precipitation probability hour by hour — taller and bluer means wetter. A quick reading guide: probabilities under 25% are generally safe to plan through, 40% and above during your specific window deserves a plan B, and any active NWS alert (which appears automatically above the chart) outranks everything else on this page.
Conditions can differ across the metro, so for your exact neighborhood — and to check a specific date and time instead of right now — use the ZIP code checker, which also finds your longest dry window of the day. For a deeper read on what these percentages actually mean, see our guide: What does a 40% chance of rain actually mean?