ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 TAG: 9606110034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR AND TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITERS
THE ROANOKE AREA received close to 5 inches of rain in the last three days - more than the area normally receives for the entire month of June - and more is on its wayo
``All right!'' shouted Mike Gillen, as he watched television news footage Monday that showed a broad white plume descend from a gray sky and slowly churn in a field. "The Doppler works!''
The National Weather Service in Blacksburg had picked up a tornado on its Doppler radar unit early Monday and tracked its projected path from southeast Henry County to the northeast corner of Pittsylvania County. A television news crew - armed with weather service projections - was able to capture the tornado on video.
Gillen, a hydrologist with the weather service, was marveling at the results.
"It was quite unusual, especially during the early morning hours," he said. "That's the time storms are least intense."
Southwest Virginia is hung up in a motionless upper-level low pressure system over the Ohio Valley, Gillen said. The system is drawing moisture from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico northward along the eastern quarter of the nation, he said.
"Wrapping that moisture around that low, you get thunderstorms developing," he said. "It tends to move over the same areas day after day. You get extremely heavy rains. And like this morning, you can get a little tornado out of these things."
Several twisters, in fact, have touched down in the region since Sunday.
In Franklin County on Sunday afternoon, a tornado chewed up and spit out a newly built home on Virginia 678 a few miles northeast of the Booker T. Washington National Monument.
Not much is left of the home, which needed only carpet and a coat of paint before its owners were to move in. A door to the house and pieces of insulation were scattered in the woods across the road.
Mike Emlaw, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, visited the Franklin County site Monday and confirmed that it was a twister that had destroyed the house.
To make his decision, Emlaw took into account weather information, the house's construction, amount of damage, and grass pattern around the home.
The tornado "touched down, got the house, and that was it," he said.
The Henry County tornado, which touched down south of Axton shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, cut a path about a mile long, Emlaw said. A twister also dropped out of the sky Monday in the Chatham area of Pittsylvania County, he said.
The twisters ripped down trees and power lines, and damaged several roofs, but no serious injuries or major power outages had been reported Monday.
There may be more of the same before the week is over.
For weather watchers, in simplest terms, the atmosphere remains very unstable. Expect more thunderstorms, some severe, possibly "tornadic."
The weather is similar to a pattern that hung over the region in June of last year, Gillen said.
"We got all this rain and flooding for about a week and a half, day after day," he said. "Between the flooding and severe weather, it was a very busy month."
This June could be just as busy.
The next few days are expected to be very active, Gillen said. The weather service is forecasting more thunderstorms and rain. But as the jet stream pattern changes, the low pressure system will gradually weaken and lift to the Northeast toward the end of the week, Gillen said.
The Roanoke area received close to 5 inches of rain in the last three days - more than the area normally receives for the entire month of June. The average June rainfall for the Roanoke area is 31/2 to 4 inches, Gillen said.
Flooding closed three streets in Roanoke on Sunday - Wiley Drive Southwest, Wise Avenue Southeast and the 900 block of Campbell Avenue Southwest. All were reopened Monday, a Roanoke police spokeswoman said.
The southern part of Botetourt County received 6 inches of rain in the last three days, with 2 to 3 inches falling in the northern part. Several areas had minor flooding, a Botetourt County Sheriff's Office spokesman said.
Likewise, the Franklin County area received 5 inches of rain. At one point, 18 roads had to be closed, according to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office. The roads were reopened by Monday evening.
The Montgomery County area received 2 to 3 inches of rainfall, the Pulaski area 1 to 2 inches, and Bedford County 1 to 3 inches. Most of the rainfall in Bedford was in the western half, near Stewartsville and Montvale, according to the National Weather Service in Lynchburg.
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. The National Weather Serviceby CNBconfirmed Monday that ``a little tornado'' demolished a newly built
home Sunday in Franklin County. 2. WAYNE DEEL. Roanoke City Police
Officer Rick Clark checks the flood level of Roanoke River against
the painted gauge on the Franklin Road Bridge. color.