DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9709020116

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE , STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

GLORIOUS SKIES YIELD TO RAINY SEPTEMBER HOLIDAY WEEKEND'S SECOND COLLISION ON BRIDGE-TUNNEL JAMS CARS FOR HOURS.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

After a spate of glorious weather in a month often known for producing sweltering heat waves, August bowed out with a stormy launch for September. And the sun was simply missing in action much of the day Monday for Labor Day beachgoers.

Some visitors who took the gray skies as an invitation to head home early found the going slow if they tried to take the Chesapeake Bay-Bridge Tunnel Monday.

Little more than a day after a car ran off the span, killing five people, another accident there snarled traffic for hours. There were no fatalities this time.

A northbound van attempted to pass other cars, similar to the maneuver that ended in death Saturday. The van struck a southbound Grand Am about 10:30 a.m. around the 14-mile post. Police halted traffic in both lanes for more than an hour, awaiting emergency crews, Bay Bridge-Tunnel spokeswoman Lorraine Smith said.

The Grand Am driver, from Tennessee, was taken to Virginia Beach General Hospital for minor injuries. No one else was reported injured. The accident was still under investigation late Monday afternoon, and no charges had been filed at that point.

For those who were not traveling Monday, thunderstorms that developed over Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina by mid-morning put a bit of a damper on holiday activities.

Rainfall amounts varied widely, with some areas getting soaked and others escaping with little or no rain.

That was in contrast to most of the rest of Virginia and North Carolina, which had another pleasant day. Fair to partly cloudy skies were the rule, with temperatures in the low to middle 80s. In a few places, the mercury even nudged past 90. Cloudy skies in the Southeast helped keep temperatures about 10 to 15 degrees cooler in Hampton Roads, however, as showers and a few small thunderstorms moved through. Monday's high at the National Weather Service office at Norfolk International Airport was 81 degrees.

The average high at the airport for this time of year is 83, with the record of 97 set in 1993.

A developing cold front over the nation's midsection was moving east, thus more showers and thunderstorms are likely at midweek for Virginia and North Carolina.

On the plus side, August ended without a single tropical event in the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico.

``The only other year this has happened, since aircraft reconnaissance began in the Atlantic Basin, was in 1961,'' said Max Mayfield, a forecaster with the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Lest anyone think such August calm portends a quiet September, however, Mayfield is quick to point out that the pendulum swung the other way in 1961. ``Six tropical storms formed during September, and five of those became hurricanes,'' he said.

To hammer home the point that the hurricane season is not over, Mayfield added: ``Records at the National Hurricane Center show that there have been tropical storms or hurricanes somewhere in the Atlantic Basin during the month of September in every year of this century.'' MEMO: Staff writer Nia Ngina Meeks contributed to this report. KEYWORDS: WEATHER

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