Local News

Your guide to the latest news from around the Northwest

Weather: Let’s see: Showers  Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday calls for light rain and maybe some snow. Snow? Thursday through Sunday is either cloudy or partly cloudy. Except for Wednesday, the forecasts beat drenching rain or a snow and ice storm. We know, many of you love the snow. (See the poll we took a short while back.) The National Weather Service in Seattle has this week’s details.

Traffic: The average price of a gallon of gasoline in Washington is $3.49, the AAA auto club reports, according to The Associated Press this morning. That’s 6 cents higher than the national average. Gas prices for some other cities from today’s AAA report: Bellingham $3.62, Bremerton $3.54, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett $3.56, Tacoma $3.54, Olympia $3.55, Vancouver $3.53, Yakima $3.61, Tri-Cities $3.29, Spokane $3.18. The map and cams.

The retractable roof at Safeco Field got stuck over the weekend when an axle broke. The Mariners say they have all the parts to fix her up. See the KING5 story.

Fat Smitty's (Photo / Google Maps)

Years ago, as the story goes, a salesman tacked the first dollar bill to a wall of Fat Smitty’s burger joint at Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula. That started a tradition that led to thousands of bills finding their way onto the walls, according to nicely told stories in The Peninsula Daily News. Smitty, aka, Carl Schmidt, recently asked some Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts to take down the bills, with plans to donate some of it to a Boy Scout project. One guess was that there was $6,000 decorating the place, but when all the bills were down and tallied, the total came to more than $10,000. Some of the money also will go to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. We like stories like this.

Most-read stories this morning on seattletimes.com:

1. Pac-12 race too close to call, but UW has good shot at title | Steve Kelley
2. UW recruiting nears decision day with one QB solid, one unclear
3. Gay-marriage bill: How it would change things in Washington
4. Armstead picks Oregon | Husky Football Blog
5. Androids no moneymaker, but Google profits from tracking