REVISE THE PRECIPITATION PROBABILITIES? Last Thursday, I was returning from the North Woods. There was steady rain from Green Bay to Milwaukee, although that quit to permit me to procure some of the items not so readily available south of the Cheddar Curtain. A radar monitor in a rest area on Interstate 43 showed a line of storms to the northwest, but it was severe clear all the way to DeKalb, and neighbors (who might not have had the radar view) were doing yard work and watering their yards. The Milwaukee radio, however, is with increasing frequency reporting severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings and preempting the Brewers broadcast. It's bizarre listening to this play out while it remains sunny and warm here, with only a hint of clouds on the far north horizon. Milwaukee got it Thursday night into Friday morning. Lost in all the coverage of flooded roads and sinkholes and water in Nicolet High School was the front, stalled over Freeport from Thursday evening until early Saturday and leaving enough rain to isolate Pearl City. Friday night into Saturday morning was Chicago's turn, with water on the Eisenhower Expressway near the Congress Park L station and near Illinois-Chicago. Despite three or four inches of rain at DeKalb, apart from the East Lagoon going out of its banks, the water pretty much stayed inside the levees and drainage ditches, unlike August 2007. To take the position that if a hundred-year flood occurs in 2007, it ought not occur in 2010 is to risk committing the gambler's fallacy. On the other hand, probabilities can be revised in light of new information, a sensible action whether or not one sees anthropogenic climate change behind the more frequent deluges.