KPLU News

The spring's cold snaps will mean not as many cherries this summer. Flower buds and bees don’t like low temperatures. And the cherries—well, they don’t like the rain. But there is a silver lining. a week.

Bryce Kenning saw the void before him in an explosion of dust, and there was nothing he could do.

"It was like time was frozen — like a roller coaster where you're not attached to the tracks," he said Friday. "It's something you never think you will ever experience in a lifetime — driving off a straight cliff."

A truck hauling a too-tall load of drilling equipment hit an overhead bridge girder on the major interstate between Seattle and Canada, sending a section of the span and two vehicles into the Skagit River. All three occupants suffered only minor injuries.

It happened about 7 p.m. Thursday on the north section of the four-lane Interstate 5 bridge near Mount Vernon, about 60 miles north of Seattle and 40 miles south of the Canada border, and disrupted travel in both directions.

Rain showers will be coming and going this weekend. That's the big picture, but Cliff Mass, professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, has a few tips for navigating:

From the Washington State Department of Transportation: 

Sonny Boy Williamson was a blues originator who helped shape the sound of modern blues. In his life, he knew the first generation of Delta bluesmen, and would go on to see the birth of modern rock music. He played with Robert Johnson in the 1930’s, and with Eric Clapton in the 1960’s.

He was a major radio star in the 1940’s on King Biscuit Time, America’s first live blues radio show. He wrote dozens of songs that became blues standards, notably “Help Me” and “Eyesight to the Blind." He recorded “Bring It On Home” in 1963, but didn’t release it until 1966.

Last fall, sixth-graders in Spanaway were forced to confront a tragedy that no student should have to go through when their beloved teacher Rob Meline died.

To make matters worse, Meline was killed in a way that made the evening news. Now, after a school year of grief and healing, the students settled on a unique way to honor their teacher by sending him into the stratosphere.

KPLU sports commentator  Art Thiel describes the Mariners' six-game losing streak as "the bleakest outlook they've had all season."And it could get worse this weekend.

Just prior to the Interstate 5 bridge collapse Thursday night in Mount Vernon, an oversized load struck a portion of the bridge’s steel superstructure, according to eyewitness accounts. 

An Interstate 5 bridge over a river north of Seattle collapsed Thursday evening, dumping several vehicles into the water as authorities investigated the cause of the collapse that cut off the state's main north-south thruway and sent three people to the hospital.

As warm weather approaches, Seattle is preparing for a spike in crime, particularly at two urban parks that have been sites of recent violence. The city will hire two full-time park rangers to patrol Occidental Park in Pioneer Square and Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill. 

Interim Seattle Police Chief Jim Pugel says the rangers are uniformed but unarmed, and work closely with the Seattle Police Department.

The Boy Scouts of America's National Council has voted to ease a long-standing ban and allow openly gay boys to be accepted as Scouts.

Of the local Scout leaders voting at their annual meeting in Texas, more than 60 percent supported the proposal.

Once a year, Amazon shareholders have a chance to ask billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos anything they wish. At this year’s annual meeting, a number of them urged Bezos to stop selling brutal video games and other products that glorify violence. 

It's not every day that a 9-year-old girl chastises the CEO of one of the world's biggest fast-food chains.

Yet that's exactly what young Hannah Robertson did Thursday morning at McDonald's annual shareholders meeting in Chicago. When the meeting opened up to questions, Hannah was first up at the mic with a pointed criticism.

"It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time," she told McDonald's CEO Don Thompson.

Ouch.

Hannah, a native of Kelowna, British Columbia, didn't get to Chicago on her own, of course.

An endangered red-crowned crane chick has joined the Woodland Park Zoo family.

The male chick was born on May 13 to parents Niles and Maris, both 21-year-old cranes who were donated to Woodland Park by Japan’s Kobi Oji Zoo.

To be released this spring (date TBD): Gonzalo Rubalcaba's Volcan

This band is comprised of musical masters, experienced bandleaders and good friends:  Jose Armando Gola-bass, Horacio “El Negro” Hernandez-drums, Giovanni  Hidalgo-congas and Gonzalo Rubalcaba-piano.

President Obama on Thursday unveiled a major pivot in White House counterterrorism policy, calling for a limiting of CIA drones strikes and for a renewed effort to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Speaking at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., the president said the death of Osama bin Laden and most of his top lieutenants, and the fact that there have been no large-scale terrorist attacks on the U.S.

A 3-D printer is being credited with helping save an Ohio baby's life, after doctors "printed" a tube to support a weak airway that caused him to stop breathing. The innovative procedure has allowed Kaiba Gionfriddo, of Youngstown, Ohio, to stay off a ventilator for more than a year.

The splint that changed Kaiba's life was implanted in February of 2012, when he was three months old.

Brian Hock was standing Wednesday evening in what used to be his home but is now 2,000 square feet of nothing. Still resting in a bag of dog food was the cup he uses to scoop kibble, emblazoned with the slogan "Fear not: God's love shines bright."

Hock was at work Monday when the tornado smashed his house in the Heather Wood subdivision of Moore, Okla.

When it comes to weaning, humans are weird.

Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and gorillas, breast-feed their offspring for several years. Some baby orangutans nurse until they are 7 years old.

But modern humans wean much earlier. In preindustrial societies, babies stop nursing after about two years. Which raises the question: How did we get that way?