THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601200281
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND LARRY BROWN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
A powerful, fast-moving cold front pushed the severe weather ahead of it as it swept through Virginia and North Carolina. With the storm's passage, rain, trees, power lines - and the mercury - fell in tandem.
It was the latest flop in a week of flips as Virginia went from wintry weather to muggy warmth and back to a January chill. From a high of 71 about noon, the mercury had dipped to 34 at 11 p.m. Friday at the National Weather Service at Norfolk International Airport.
And the plunge was forecast to continue statewide. By this morning, temperatures could be below freezing along the Atlantic Coast.
But it was the rain and the high winds of Friday's brief but powerful storm that stunned many.
``It was very mean-looking,'' said Ruth Doughtie, a desk receptionist at Pembroke Towers in Norfolk's Ghent. ``It was so bad.''
She said the whirling, whipping winds damaged windows on more than 15 cars parked on the west side of the building.
``This . . . window on the driver's side was broken out just as clean,'' Doughtie said. ``It just sucked the glass out.''
Some cars were missing two to three windows, she said. And many other windows that were not missing were shattered, Doughtie said.
Winds gusting to 60 mph at the Norfolk Naval Station pushed so hard on the broad hull of the helicopter carrier Nassau that it pulled steel cleats and bollards from the dock and sent the 833-foot ship nearly perpendicular to the pier.
The ship, tied to Pier 7, clipped an adjacent pier to the north where the Navy's tug fleet is normally moored, slightly damaged one civilian tug and knocked over a 50-foot section of that small wood and concrete pier, officials said.
Elsewhere on the base, electrical power was knocked out for about 45 minutes. All power was restored at the base by 1:30 p.m., except for Pier 7 and portions of the Atlantic Fleet compound.
Several car windows were blown out, said Beth Baker, a base spokeswoman, and tree limbs also were scattered around.
The storm's impact was felt up and down the Middle Atlantic Coast.
On North Carolina's Outer Banks, a concrete-block warehouse at the Buxton Coast Guard station was leveled by what some witnesses feared was a tornado.
No one was injured when the winds blew off the roof and knocked down the walls of the unoccupied building. Some equipment inside was damaged.
``We were lucky,'' said Lt. j.g. Mike Guerin. ``The warehouse was only 30 feet from the barracks where there were a lot of people, but the barracks wasn't touched.''
Guerin said no one saw a funnel cloud ``because there was a wall of rain'' when the winds hit at 1:30 p.m. ``I heard a noise and stepped out of our office, but all I could see was a giant wall of water.''
Debris from the one-story warehouse was thrown into some nearby homes on the the base, breaking some windows.
As many as 25,000 Virginia Power customers were left in the dark as the storm passed, knocking limbs and tress across power lines. Most service was restored by nightfall, but utility crews were expected to work through the night getting all the lights back on.
Norfolk was the hardest hit, with as many as 10,000 homes and businesses without electricity at one point, a utility spokeswoman said.
On the highways, stiff winds and driving rain reduced traffic to a crawl. Many motorists pulled to the side rather than risk driving with visibility down to a few feet.
There were scores of accidents. Rising water in low-lying areas flooded dozens of vehicles.
In Norfolk, about 35 to 40 traffic signals were disabled by high winds.
Hardest hit were busy intersections along Colley Avenue at 26th and 38th streets, said John Stevenson, Norfolk's traffic signal system operator.
At the Bank of Hampton Roads in the 400 block of St. Paul's Blvd., high winds blew in three, floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the first-floor lobby. No one was injured and bank personnel, trying to pick up the pieces at mid-afternoon, said the situation was slowly getting back to normal.
For some homeowners, however, ``normal'' is probably days away.
``It sounded like a locomotive hit the house,'' said Wayne Mohler, 77, whose home in Norfolk's Bay View section was punctured by a felled tree.
Mohler, a retired government worker, said the top part of a pine tree snapped off.
``It's messed up two of our rooms,'' Mohler said. ``We've got limbs on our bed.''
At James Grabow's home in the Cherokee Heights section of Norfolk, ``It sounded like the roof was coming in,'' when the storm dropped a large oak limb on the two-story structure.
In downtown Norfolk, part of the steeple of St. Mary's Catholic Church snapped off and impaled itself in the church roof.
And then it was over.
Behind a solid line of gray that stretched across the horizon, the clouds gave way to clear blue skies.
``There were a couple of things that were unusual about this storm for this time of year,'' said Bill Sammler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Wakefield.
First, summerlike air - not unusual along the coast, where temperatures often hit 70 at least once every January - penetrated far inland, all the way to the mountains. That fueled the line of storms which intensified dramatically - long before they reached the coast.
The fierce thunderstorms, compounded by melting snow, brought rivers in western Virginia out of their banks, forcing people to evacuate homes and businesses, closing roads and causing mud and rock slides in the mountains.
In communities along the Shenandoah Valley, rescue teams used boats or waded in 2 or more feet of water to take stranded residents from their houses.
The storm line moved fast, well ahead of the actual cold front that was pushing it east.
``Behind that line, there is a lot of dry air coming in and really clearing things out very dramatically,'' Sammler said. ``And the temperatures are going to drop into the mid-20s.''
There was one bright spot in the storm line's passage, Sammler said. Because it was so far ahead of the cold air, roads and sidewalks would have plenty of time to dry before freezing weather reached the coast overnight.
``And it gave folks an opportunity to enjoy one more nice day,'' Sammler said. ``Temperatures in the upper 50s are pretty pleasant for this time of year.'' MEMO: Staff writer Jack Dorsey contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by RICHARD L. DUNSTON, The Virginian-Pilot
Ruth Doughtie, a desk receptionist at Pembroke Towers in Norfolk's
Ghent, said Friday's high winds damaged windows on more than 15 cars
parked on the west side of the building. Some cars were missing two
to three windows, she said.
Color photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Norfolk firefighters work to cover a hole in the roof at 8370
Chesapeake Blvd. Friday's wild wind hurled a nearby tree onto the
roof.
KEYWORDS: STORM WEATHER DAMAGE by CNB