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It looked like a big hit from Texas sophomore Bella Dayton might end the Washington softball season Sunday afternoon.

Instead, it was her big hit Sunday evening that helped end it.

After Washington rallied late to beat Texas 2-1 in Sunday’s opener, Dayton hit a two-run, two-out double in the fifth inning that propelled the Longhorns to a 3-2 win in the deciding game of the NCAA Regional at Husky Softball Stadium.

The Huskies didn’t go down without a fight, scoring twice in the seventh inning and bringing the potential winning run to the plate before finally succumbing.

“We ended up playing from behind, but I am proud of our fight and what we did,” Washington coach Heather Tarr said.

It was the fifth inning that will bother UW fans for a long time.

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Washington ace Gabbie Plain appeared to have retired the side when Janae Jefferson flew out.

But as UW players were starting to leave the field, the second-base umpire ruled the out came on an illegal pitch — apparently believing she had not kept her feet inside the 24-inch length of the pitcher’s plate (the umpires were not made available for comment).

Given a second chance, Jefferson reached base on an infield single. Jefferson then stole second, with the umpire ruling she avoided a tag even though the throw beat her to the bag. The Huskies challenged the call, but lost.

That ended up haunting the Huskies. Mia Scott then walked, and Dayton, who moved from No. 8 in the order to No. 3 for the first time this season after homering in the opening game, laced the two-run double to left-center field.

“It’s tough to [have to come back to the mound], especially when you think you just got out of the inning,” Plain said.

Said Tarr of the call, “It’s a tough angle for that responsibility of the umpire … but that’s not the reason we didn’t score runs.”

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Jefferson added a solo homer off Plain in the seventh inning, and Hailey Dolcini, who pitched all 14 innings Sunday for Texas, was able to hold the lead this time — just barely.

So it will be unseeded Texas (41-18-1) who will be heading to No. 3 seed Arkansas for the Super Regional.

Washington (38-17), the No. 13 seed and ranked No. 11, lost a home regional for the first since Tarr became head coach in 2005.

The situation looked dire for Washington in the first game until Madison Huskey came up to hit with one out in the sixth inning.

The right fielder jumped on the first pitch from Dolcini, hitting a towering home run well over the left-field wall. The two-run homer ignited a standing-room-only crowd, which saw the Huskies go from trailing by one to leading by one.

Plain took it from there — with the help of some good defense from freshman shortstop Rylee Holtorf — and the Huskies held on for a for a 2-1 win over the Longhorns at Husky Softball Stadium.

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It became clear early that any run in the opening would be a pretty big deal.

With Plain and Dolcini at the top of their games, everyone in the packed stands knew one big hit could decide the outcome.

Longhorn fans thought their team got that hit in the fifth inning.

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It came from Dayton, with just three homers and a .267 batting average entering the game. The light-hitting Dayton turned on a 1-2 pitch from Plain leading off the fifth and hit it into the right-field stands.

It seemed like that run might be enough until Baylee Klinger hit a one-out single for UW in the top of the fifth inning, bringing up Huskey.

Huskey’s homer kept the season alive for UW, which lost to Texas on Saturday, putting the Huskies in the losers’ bracket and needing to win three straight games.

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They beat Lehigh on Saturday night and then Texas in the first game Sunday to set up a deciding game.

Washington was in a similar predicament last season, and found a way to advance, beating Michigan twice after losing to the Wolverines the day before.

This time, the Huskies came up one win short.

Plain nearly pitched two complete games for Washington. But after allowing a pair of runners after Jefferson’s homer with two outs in the seventh inning, Tarr took out her fifth-year senior.

Plain, a two-time first-team All-American and one of the best pitchers in Husky history, received a standing ovation from the UW crowd.

“Knowing it could be my last game, I wanted to give everything I could for the girls,” Plain said.

Said Tarr, “It’s obviously sad to end Gabbie’s career and [fifth-year senior pitcher] Pat Moore’s career.”

The Huskies got more ovations with a rally in the bottom of the seventh, with Brooke Nelson and Jenn Cummings getting run-scoring hits before Dolcini ended the game by striking out Kinsey Fiedler.

“We gave ourselves a chance to win and I guess that’s all we can ask,” Tarr said.

Scott Hanson: [email protected]; on Twitter: @shansonseatimes.

The Huskies ended a long Saturday with a win that kept their season alive.

But Washington still faces a tough task trying to advance in the NCAA regional at Husky Softball Stadium, thanks to a tough-to-stomach loss earlier in the day.

Just when it seemed the Washington softball team was going to escape from a major jam in that opening game, it didn’t.

Texas (40-17-1) took advantage of a UW error with two outs and the bases loaded in the sixth, scoring three runs in the frame and going on to an 8-2 victory over the Huskies on Saturday afternoon in an NCAA regional game at Husky Softball Stadium.

Washington (37-16) rebounded from that loss to defeat Lehigh for the second time in two days, this time in an elimination game, with junior pitcher Brooke Nelson leading the 6-1 victory.

But the Huskies still have plenty of work left, needing to defeat Texas twice Sunday — starting at 3 p.m. — to move on to a super regional.

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“We’re just happy to continue to advance and live to see another day,” said UW coach Heather Tarr.

That is a predicament that didn’t seem likely heading into the sixth inning against Texas, with ace Gabbie Plain having allowed just one hit and the Huskies leading 2-0 thanks to Baylee Klingler’s 24th home run of the season.

But Plain got into immediate trouble in the sixth inning, allowing a hit and walking the next two hitters to load the bases with no outs.

Plain, a two-time first-team All-American, was unfazed. She rebounded by striking out Texas cleanup hitter Mary Iakopo on a 3-2 pitch. Up came Alyssa Washington, who fouled off four straight 3-2 pitches before Plain blew a pitch past her.

The escape act seemed completed when Katie Cimusz hit a grounder to Klingler at shortstop.

Klingler, having perhaps the greatest offensive season in UW softball history and normally reliable in the field, booted the ball, bringing in a run.

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It got worse for the Huskies when Lauren Burke hit a blooper to left field. That allowed one run to score. That might have been it, but left fielder Sami Reynolds overran the ball and that allowed the go-ahead run to come home without a throw.

That ended the day for Plain. Reliever Pat Moore got the final out of the inning without any more damage, but Texas scored five runs off her in the seventh to end the suspense.

Things were much happier for UW in the first inning. Kinsey Fiedler led off with a sharp single to right field. After a fly out, Klingler jumped on a 2-1 pitch from Texas ace Hailey Dolcini, and it got out in a hurry.

The only question was if it was high enough to clear the wall in center field. It was.

Klingler, who won the Pac-12 triple crown by leading the conference in homers, batting average and runs batted, has 24 homers this season. That leaves her one off the school record of 25 that was set by Kristen Rivera in 2003.

Klingler was in position to do more damage in the third inning. She grounded out to the pitcher with runners on second and third with one out. Two pitches earlier, she just missed a homer when a long drive curved foul.

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With the way Plain was pitching, not allowing a hit through four innings, it seemed it might not matter. But after the defensive miscue in the sixth inning, it certainly did.

It also didn’t help UW that Dolcini retired the final 15 hitters she faced.

With their season on the line against Lehigh (31-20-1), Tarr elected to start Nelson at pitcher, an interesting choice considering she had not pitched since April 23 and has pitched two total innings the past two months.

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Nelson made her coach look smart, not allowing a hit until Brooke Cannon had an infield single with one out in the fifth inning.

Nelson, who said she learned “just prior to the game” that she would be the starting pitcher, and said she had no idea she was throwing a perfect game into the fifth inning.

“It was just me and (catcher) Jenn (Cummings),” Nelson said. “Just good pitches in good spots.”

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Washington got solo homers from Madison Huskey, Sarah Willis, Fiedler and Kelley Lynch to lead the offensive onslaught, and it gave the Huskies a team record 89 homers on the season, breaking the mark of 86 set in 2016.

The four homers were more than enough support for Nelson, who allowed one run on three hits in six innings.

“She pitches every day to us (in practice), so she’s prepared and ready,” Tarr said of Nelson. “Opportunities maybe haven’t presented themselves to her yet, but she obviously came in and did an amazing job for us.”

Willis pitched a perfect seventh, with the game finishing nearly nine after hours after the first pitch of the day.

Now it’s on to Sunday.

Husky fans only need to look back to last season to have reason for hope. UW lost to Michigan in a winners’ side game, then beat Seattle U later that night and the Wolverines twice the next day to advance.

“For this group of mind, I think it gives them peace of mind, knowing it’s just softball games, and we know the road,” Tarr said.

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Scott Hanson: [email protected]; on Twitter: @shansonseatimes.

The war in Ukraine has exposed Russia’s limitations in battlefield technology, and trade sanctions are further strangling Russia’s access to all forms of tech goods.

SEATTLE —

The war in Ukraine has exposed Russia’s limitations in battlefield technology, and trade sanctions imposed by the west are further strangling Russia’s access to all forms of tech goods.

Some experts believe that means that Russia will ramp up its spying operations in U.S. cities that are rich with technology firms, and that includes the Seattle area.

“I think that Russian espionage will be more aggressive,” Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov told KING 5 in a video interview from London.

“Russian spies now believe they are in a war mode, meaning that more things are acceptable for them than before the war,” Soldatov said.

“Seattle remains a prime location for espionage to occur,” said Naveed Jamali, a former civilian double-agent for the FBI, who used to live in Seattle.

Experts say it’s not just technology. western Washington’s military bases, including the fearsome Trident nuclear submarines at Naval Base Kitsap and defense contractors like Boeing have valuable secrets.

“Russia’s emphasis and priority on collecting intelligence, that’s a fancy way of saying spying, has only increased as a result of Ukraine,” said Jamali.

Within the last decade or so, several cases have revealed Russia’s interest in stealing secrets in Seattle.

They were the private couple that lived on the fifth floor of the Belmont Court Apartments in Seattle in the mid-2000s.

Michael Zotolli and Patricia Mills had a son, held jobs and attended classes at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus.

“If you tried to talk to them on the elevator or in the hallway, they were just always very evasive,” said one neighbor in 2010, just days after it became public that the couple had been arrested and deported as Russian sleeper spies.

Using forged documents, Zotolli and Mills had created false identities and blended into American society.

“There are Russian folks undercover, essentially masquerading as Americans,” said Jamali.

Zotolli and Mills were rounded up in 2010 with eight other sleeper spies on the East Coast in a case the FBI called “Operation Ghost Stories.”

For years before then, agents secretly recorded photos and videos of spies handing off money and flash memory cards, burying packages in “dead drops” for other spies to pick up later and meetings between spies and undercover FBI agents.

Videos show Zotolli making several trips to New York to meet with other Russian spies. One video from 2006 shows Zotolli in a New York park digging up a duct-tape bound package that another spy had buried two years earlier.

When arrested by the FBI, documents show that the façade cracked and both Zotolli and Mills admitted to the roles as spies before they were deported to Russia.

In 2018, the federal government shut down what was believed to be a den of spying in the Pacific Northwest.

The Russian consulate in Seattle was an extension of the Russian embassy in Washington D.C., responsible for processing Russian visa applications, passports and other official documents.

Federal agents believed the Russian diplomats posted there were spies, and the Trump administration expelled them.

Experts say Russian diplomats are routinely military intelligence officers with high-level training in espionage. In “Operation Ghost Stories,” agents had recorded diplomats in New York handing off packages filled with cash to spies to fund their ongoing operations.

The U.S. never released specifics about the reputed spying at the Seattle consulate.

The Consul’s residence, a historic mansion called “Hyde House” on East Madison Street, still sits empty.

King County property records show the building is still owned by the Russian Consulate.

However, the grounds are controlled by the U.S. State Department, which said in a statement to KING 5.

“Under U.S. law, the Secretary of State can restrict access to such properties,” the statement read. “There has been no change in the status of the property in Seattle since March 2018.”

By the time Naveed Jamali had a brush with a suspected Russian spy in Seattle, he was already a well-known former “double agent.”

In the early 2000s, Jamali’s family in New York owned a business that supplied military textbooks and manuals to government agencies.

One day, FBI agents approached and informed the family that suspected Russian spies were regular customers at their store.

That was the beginning of Jamali’s relationship with the FBI, which blossomed into a plan to dangle the young Jamali before the Russians as a potential source ripe for recruitment.

“So, I became a double agent. And to make it very clear what my goal was, I was to have the Russian intelligence apparatus operating in the United States recruit me as a Russian spy,” Jamali told KING 5. “The whole time I was being recruited, I was really working for the FBI.”

Jamali says the plan was “crazy” and “unconventional,” but it worked. Three years later he reeled in a big fish, a Russian diplomat who was deported (he could not be arrested or charged because of diplomatic immunity).

Years later, Jamali wrote a book, “How to Catch a Russian Spy” and told his story on the lecture circuit.

After he moved to Seattle in 2016, he told his story to a community group at the downtown Westin Hotel.

It was there he was approached by a woman who set off his well-honed spy sense.

“I fully believe that she was a Russian asset who had been directed to make contact with me and try to see if I would talk or get me in a compromising position,” said Jamali, who once served as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserve.

“I turned it all over to federal officials,” he said, adding that he is unclear if the FBI acted on his tip.

Download our free KING 5 app to stay up-to-date on news stories from across western Washington.

Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov is renowned for his inside reporting on Russia’s three spy agencies and is a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis.

His reporting is increasingly restricted in his homeland.

"That is one of the reasons why I left the country in September 2020,” said Soldatov, from his London office.

Soldatov said he does not have any specific information about Seattle, but he does expect Russia’s “war mode” to raise the stakes for spies operating in U.S. cities with vibrant tech companies.

“The United States is the main target. So, I would completely expect that they have a lot of people on the ground, and they can use them now,” said Soldatov.

Soldatov said the current economic sanctions against Russia should not be underestimated.

“We had this situation before, back in the (era of the) Soviet Union. And the way the Soviet Union tried to fix this problem was to go to spies and ask them to steal some technologies from the West,” said Soldatov.

Soldatov said Russian president Vladimir Putin, a former intelligence officer, has spent decades building his spy machine.

Seattle may be one place where it’s already up and running.

Weather commentary is one of the quickest ways to out yourself as a transplant in Seattle. Whining about rain in November? Must be from California. Laughing at our flurry freakouts? Minnesotan, eh?

Living in the mist is basically an art form around here, so you can understand why anyone would be hesitant to complain about the recent onslaught of chilly, damp days, or the cloud cover that ruined eclipse photo opps. But the local meteorological authorities have weighed in, and even the software engineers who’ve arrived in the post-Russ era can say it: This spring has been bad.

How bad? The worst in a decade, according to Seattle Weather Blog. Since March 1, the mean average temperature at Sea-Tac is a hair north of 48 degrees, the coldest since 2011 and the 13th lowest since the airport started keeping track in 1945. Halfway through this soggy May, we’re already threatening record rain tallies for the entire month, per the National Weather Service.

The reasons for this discomfort aren’t reassuring. A La Niña winter has lingered into spring with little sign of letting up. And the cold, wet weather seems worse than it is because of rising temperatures in recent years. “Simply put, we have been ‘spoiled’ by so many warmer spring months than we should expect, our perception of what a ‘normal’ spring is has been ‘reset,’” KIRO 7 chief meteorologist Morgan Palmer recently observed.

Of course, hundreds of thousands in the vicinity of Puget Sound weren’t around for that chillier version of “normal.” Some of these newcomers only know our extremes; memories of the heat dome and urban skiing are still fresh.

But rest assured, transplants, this weather isn’t likely to stick. The sun has made some cameos in recent days, and the forecast looks decidedly less gloomy later this week. Later sunset times will gradually bump up temps, too. Perhaps not annoyingly high: La Niña could bring a blessedly cooler summer than last year’s scorcher, experts say.

Temperate—just the way we like it around here.

SEATTLE — Planning a road trip or visiting family and friends this Memorial Day weekend? The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) released travel charts for three state highways expected to see higher than usual traffic over the holiday weekend to help drivers plan ahead.

This year, the department shared travel charts for Interstate 5 between Lacey and Tacoma, US 2 between Stevens Pass and Skykomish and Interstate 90 between North Bend and Cle Elum.

WSDOT said drivers could experience higher than usual traffic on highways between May 26-31, especially on I-90 “where lengthy delays are expected.” I-90 runs across Snoqualmie Pass and stretches through almost the entire state from Seattle to Spokane.

WSDOT traffic analysts created the charts by looking at how many cars were on roads during previous Memorial Day weekends. WSDOT said drivers can expect some congestion on the roads when the charts turn from green to yellow. When the chart is red, the WSDOT said the roadway is predicted to be at capacity.

“Once a roadway reaches capacity, any small incident can cause significant backups,” WSDOT said.

The black line on the graph shows what traffic is like on a typical weekend.

I-5 between Lacey and Tacoma

Anyone driving on I-5 between Lacey and Tacoma should expect moderate to heavy traffic with some congestion at times each day over the Memorial Day weekend. However, the WSDOT charts show traffic is predicted to be about the same as a typical weekend.

Northbound drivers should expect the heaviest traffic on Thursday between 5 a.m. and 2 p.m., Friday between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m., Saturday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Sunday at 10 a.m. and between 1-8 p.m., Monday between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. and on Tuesday from 5 a.m. until 5 p.m.

Southbound drivers should expect about the same. According to the WSDOT, drivers should expect the heaviest congestion between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, on Saturday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Sunday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and on Tuesday between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Southbound traffic on Memorial Day is predicted to be less congested than a typical day, with the highest travel times between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

I-5 traffic forecast for Memorial Day weekend 2022

I-90 between North Bend and Cle Elum

Eastbound traffic on I-90 over Snoqualmie Pass is expected to be higher than normal on Thursday but not reach capacity.

Traffic on Friday, however, is predicted to be above normal for most of the day. The WSDOT said eastbound traffic is expected to be “moderate to heavy” between 7-10 a.m. and 8-9 p.m. The roadway is expected to reach capacity from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. Friday.

Traffic will also be higher than normal on Saturday, with the heaviest congestion expected between 8 a.m. and noon. Eastbound traffic is predicted to be at or below a typical weekend from Sunday to Tuesday.

Westbound traffic is expected to be at or below a typical weekend between Thursday and Sunday. However, westbound drivers should “expect congestion” between 2-5 p.m. on Sunday, but it’s predicted to be less than the average weekend.

On Memorial Day, drivers should steer clear of westbound I-90 from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. to avoid the worst congestion.

I-90 traffic forecast for Memorial Day weekend 2022

US 2 between Stevens Pass and Skykomish

Eastbound traffic on US 2 over Stevens Pass is expected to be higher than normal Thursday through Monday. The roadway is predicted to reach capacity Friday at 11 a.m. and between 2-7 p.m., and again Saturday between 9-11 a.m. Eastbound traffic is predicted to be higher than normal the other days over the holiday weekend but not reach capacity.

Westbound traffic is predicted to be at or below normal Thursday through Saturday, with moderate to heavy traffic Sunday between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Drivers should avoid driving westbound on US 2 on Monday between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m.

US 2 traffic forecast for Memorial Day weekend 2022

Due to the expected increase in traffic, the WSDOT is advising drivers to plan ahead to help save time and any frustration.

The WSDOT also warned travelers of longer than normal wait times on Washington State Ferries (WSF) docks over the holiday weekend. Click here to check the WSF travel alert website for the latest information about cancelations and delays.