The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center is playing it safe with its outlook for the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season, which got under way this week and runs through November.

The center calls for "a 50 percent probability of a near-normal season, a 25 percent probability of an above-normal season and a 25 percent probability of a below-normal season."

IN THE ARMY NOW

This columnist recalls attending an Alexandria housing community keg party and concert more than a decade ago and being introduced to one friendly attendee who was comfortably clad in shorts and a bright red Hawaiian shirt, his hair worn none-too-short.

To my surprise, it was Rep. John M. McHugh, now a nine-term New York Republican and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, who was nominated Tuesday by President Obama to become secretary of the Army.

NEW GENERATION

"Weymouth has a self-deprecating manner and a handshake like a Marine."

Or so writes best-selling author Ronald Kessler, chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com, who praises Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, 43, for her efforts to shed the newspaper of its long-standing liberal bias as practiced by her late grandmother, former Post Chairman Katharine Graham.