
DATE: Thursday, June 5, 1997                TAG: 9706050474

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

THIS CAN'T BE JUNE BRRRRR! HIGHS 20 DEGREES BELOW THE AVERAGE FOR JUNE HAVE FORCED TOURISTS TO RETHINK BEACH PLANS

The region's official temperature peaked at a not-so-pleasant 59 degrees Tuesday, the lowest June high in Hampton Roads since 1907. Wednesday, also damp and cool, didn't get much better.

Today should be an improvement - but not much, and not for long.

In a month where highs are normally near 80, the past two days have seen temperatures dip 20 degrees south of the average, although the mercury has not reached the month's record low of 45 set in 1967. Since the weekend, off-and-on rain showers have slowed traffic, puzzled locals, dampened the best-laid plans of tourists and given headaches to boaters and fishermen.

Water sport hobby shops were also empty in Nags Head. There, tourists expecting warm weather instead found themselves bundled in heavy clothes as they shied from white heavy surf at the beaches.

Chop in the water may have knocked loose a red channel marker from the Chesapeake Bay. The buoy was found Wednesday morning in shallow water near 25th Street in Virginia Beach, then it drifted to 21st, where emergency personnel got the renegade floater under control by tethering it to the beach.

``Look at it out there,'' said Guy Wheatley, a 33-year-old lifeguard keeping spectators away from the scene. ``I've seen all kinds of things wash up, but I've never seen a buoy this big.''

The buoy, believed to be what the Coast Guard calls a ``first-class nun,'' tips the scales at about 5,400 pounds. It was weighted by a chain made of seven-inch links connected to a 5,000-pound concrete sinker. The Portsmouth-based Coast Guard cutter Red Cedar was in charge of the recovery, and the rescuers hired a commercial tow truck to pull the nun, which had separated from its sinker, off the sand.

Eyeing the beach-bound buoy was about as close to the water as the Mullens clan got during its vacation from Knoxville, Tenn. The family arrived Sunday. Monday was cold and rainy. Tuesday and Wednesday the beaches were closed to swimmers. The Mullenses head to Williamsburg today, continuing a family jaunt to Virginia which has not lived up to its billing in the tourism brochures.

``This was supposed to have been a vacation at the beach, and it rained the whole time we were here,'' said Terry Mullens. Her 9-year-old daughter, Anna, wore a long-sleeve Portsmouth souvenir shirt bought the day before when it began raining during their tour of Olde Towne. And her son, Jay, 1, huddled in his stroller. He was wrapped in a wind-breaker.

``We were going to Water Country and Busch Gardens,'' said Anna, ``and now it's all ruined.''

It was a familiar sentiment at the Oceanfront. Wind and waves swept the waterfront, and a block from the Boardwalk the ``no cruising'' signs echoed a moot point to Atlantic Avenue's T-shirt shops and eateries, a collection that resembled a well-manicured ghost town.

The culprit in all this, said Mike Rusnak of the National Weather Service office in Wakefield, is a slow-moving, low-pressure system off the East Coast that is bumping heads with a high-pressure system over Canada and sending cool, northeast winds off the water.

Today the region is between systems and the high probably will reach into the mid 60s. But more cool air is on the way for Friday and Saturday, and rain is expected throughout the weekend should another low-pressure system from the Midwest merge with Gulf and Atlantic moisture.

``It doesn't look like it's going to get warm before the weekend,'' said Rusnak. ``It isn't great for tourists, but it has been dry - so rain is welcomed. It's all depending on who you are and what you do.''

William H. Carter, 54, of South Norfolk saw a day of crabbing slowed by the cold Wednesday at Great Bridge Locks Park in Chesapeake. He pulled in a few Jimmies - male blue crabs - off nine lines, but business was down to a crawl at the spot he has crabbed since his parents brought him here.

``I've seen a lot of late winters in March, but I've never seen a 4th of June where it's been 50-some degrees in the morning,'' said Carter.

``Me and my son were joking about it this morning,'' he continued, noting a Cold War begun and finished between a pair of June cold snaps here.

``I said it must be something the Russians were doing. He said, `Why?' And I said, `We used to blame everything on them.' '' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Drew Wilson/The Virginian-Pilot

These disappointed Outer Banks vacationers stand on the beach at

Kitty Hawk, where it appeared too cold Wednesday to enjoy the surf.

From Hazard, Ky., they are Rita White, 34, left, Teresa White, 33,

center, and Pam Henson, 26.

Photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Dewey Dutton, left, and James Borchett graduated from college

Tuesday night in Xenia, Ohio, and drove to Virginia Beach on

Wednesday, hoping to enjoy surf and sun. They found the surf a bit

too cold.

Photo

HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot