With April getting unseasonably cold, freeze watches posted for Central Maryland, and rumors of snow in the air, it's time I slipped away from the WeatherBlog control center. I will be hunkered down in my Unseasonable Weather Bunker, nicely sheltered from the cold, getting some much-needed R&R with a teacher I know.

While I'm gone, the Blog will go silent. But I invite you to check the forecast on your own. Click here for the main page of the National Weather Service's Sterling, Va. forecast office. Then, on the map, just click on your hometown and the forecast will appear.

For night sky forecasts, try the 2007 backyard stargazing calendar we published at the end of December. Here's a link.

Looking for the International Space Station? You're in luck. The ISS is back in the evening sky. Look for two good passes next week, on the 9th and the 11th.

On Monday, the 9th, the station will rise above the southwest horizon at 9:09 p.m., zipping over Mississippi and Alabama at 17,500 mph, headed for the skies over Maine. Watch for it to soar through the constellation Orion, rising as high as 62 degrees - two-thirds of the way from the horizon to the "zenith" - straight up. It will look like a steady white star hustling toward the northeast. But then it will vanish suddenly into the Earth's shadow and disappear at 9:12 p.m.

On the 11th, the ISS will fly nearly the exact same trajectory, rising above the southwest horizon at 8:14 p.m., this time sailing clear across the sky. It will pass almost directly over Baltimore (a bit to the north and west), and head off toward the northeast horizon, disappearing at 8:20 p.m.

You'll need clear skies, of course. And a sharp-eyed child, eager to spot it first, will help. Good luck.

The Blog will revive on the 17th.