June is a fine month to get outside at night and enjoy the night sky. The temperatures are right, and with luck, a clear sky will reveal Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter - all easily visible to the naked eye during the month. Here's the new guide to Tonight's Sky, from the folks at Hubble Space Telescope.

June also marks the beginning of the three-month meteorological summer and the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. But first, let's have a look back at May.

As we all know by now, May was a very dry month for Maryland, the fourth-driest on record at BWI. The airport say less than an inch of rain (0.94), compared with a long-term average of 3.89 inches. The month also ended last night 2.6 degrees warmer than average, making it the third-warmest May in the last decade.

The high temperature for the month was 92 degrees, reached at BWI last Saturday. The low was 36 degrees, on the 8th. The airport recorded 114 cooling degree-days. That's 43 DD, or 60 percent, above the long-term average. With BGE's electric rates jumping this month, we can only hope that trend doesn't continue.

So now comes June. Although the meteorological summer began today, the astronomical season arrives at 2:11 p.m. on the 21st. Some would argue that the longest day and shortest night of the year actually mark the middle of summer. After that, the days grow shorter as we head toward winter. And in fact June 21 is still celebrated as Midsummer's Day in some countries.

During June in Baltimore, the average daytime high temperature rises from 79 degrees to 86 degrees. The average overnight low climbs from the 50s to 64 degrees. The hottest days of the year still lie ahead, in mid-July.

Among the weather memories we can toss around this month are last year's week-long deluge of rains, pumped northward out of the tropics between the 23rd and the 28th. Before it was over BWI had recorded almost 6 inches of rain.

This month also marks the 35th anniversary of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Agnes. The storm was only briefly a hurricane, but was nevertheless the costliest natural disaster in the U.S. at the time, causing more than $3.1 billion in damage ($14.9 billion adjusted for inflation). The storm and the resulting flooding also killed 117 people, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In Maryland, the heavy rain and flooding caused $110 million in damage (in 1972 dollars) and killed 19 people, the third-highest state death toll, after Pennsylvania and New York.