THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 4, 1996 TAG: 9607040551
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 71 lines
Perfect.
That's what the National Weather Service is promising for today as folks celebrate the Fourth. Skies should be sunny, temperatures comfortable and humidity low this afternoon, with fair weather for pyrotechnics this evening.
All that thanks to a cold front that ushered in the cooler, drier air Wednesday evening.
The front arrived with a bang, as nature served its own fireworks display of sorts - a gutter-washing downpour accompanied by brilliant lightning. And it was all capped off with a huge rainbow in the eastern sky as the fast-moving storm line passed.
``We were coming home from downtown (Norfolk) and we saw a double rainbow,'' said Terry Bourn of Virginia Beach. ``It was so pretty.''
As he neared the Ingleside area, Bourn said, ``We saw a church steeple off in the distance and it looked like the rainbow was going through the steeple. It was so amazing.''
The storms caused brief flooding in several low-lying intersections in downtown Norfolk, slowing homebound traffic to a crawl at times as cars and trucks sent up huge waves.
Scattered power outages hit the area as the storms moved through Portsmouth and Chesapeake and into Virginia Beach. Winds gusted to 50 mph, and there were numerous lightning strikes.
In North Carolina, several trees were downed in Northampton and Hertford counties along the Virginia border. Dime-sized hail was reported in Chowan County and some hail in Hertford County was the size of golf balls, according to the National Weather Service.
Utility crews in North Carolina and Virginia were kept busy through the night trying to restore service to homes.
Virginia Power spokesman Junius H. Williams Jr. - whose own home was darkened for a while - said about 25,000 customers lost service in Southeastern Virginia.
Portsmouth was hardest hit, with about 9,000 customers affected. About 9,500 of the outages were on the Peninsula and in the Williamsburg area. In Virginia Beach, 2,500 lost power; and in Chesapeake, 3,500. Fewer than 1,000 customers in Norfolk were affected.
Williams said some service in Portsmouth may not be restored until this morning.
``Lightning took out some of our main circuits,'' Williams said. That problem was fixed relatively quickly, however. More troublesome were hundreds of scattered outages caused by felled trees and downed limbs.
As soon as the storms passed, skies began to clear and temperatures dropped. At the Norfolk Naval Air Station, the mercury had dipped to 68 by 6 p.m. An hour earlier, it had been 84.
The temperatures should hold in the comfortable range today and Friday before beginning a slow rise once again.
Even a dip in the ocean will be nice. On Wednesday, the weather service reported surf temperatures of 71 at Virginia Beach and 72 at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
Here is the holiday weekend forecast for Hampton Roads:
Today - Partly sunny, breezy and less humid. High of 81 with northwest winds of 15 to 20 mph.
Tonight - Clear with a low in the 60s and westerly winds at 5 to 10 mph.
Friday - Sunny and pleasant with a high in the mid-80s.
Saturday and Sunday - Partly to mostly sunny with increasing humidity. The high will be in the mid 80s each day with an overnight low in the upper 60s on Saturday and Sunday. ILLUSTRATION: MICHAEL KESTNER, The Virginian-Pilot
Dene Vann from the First Baptist day school takes shelter with Old
Glory during Wednesday's Independence Day sidewalk parade in
Suffolk. Children from day care schools offered a brief morning
parade through downtown. by CNB