Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category

The drive around Arlington wasn’t terrible during this morning’s deluge — nothing like the dozen drivers who had to be rescued due to rising water in the District.

There were patches of bad traffic, though.

The ART 41 route was delayed due to slow traffic on Glebe Road.

Currently, as the rain has returned for a brief reprise, I-66 westbound is very slow through Arlington. At 10:00 the Key Bridge remains backed up, along with traffic in Rosslyn.

And in sad news for hungry office workers, the District Taco cart is sitting today out because of the rain.

How was your commute this morning?

From Arlington Alert:

Arlington is under a flood watch beginning at 10 am on Wednesday, August 18 and lasting til 3 am on Thursday, August 19.  National Weather Service is predicting periods of rain that could produce local amounts of rain up to 2″ to as much as 3″

Update at 6:45 p.m. — For once this summer, the initial storm prediction did not pan out. There’s still a chance that storms will develop later, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely.

The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Arlington and the greater Washington area.

Strong storms are expected to roll through the area some time between 3:00 and 5:00 tonight. The severe thunderstorm watch expires at 10:00 p.m.

ARLnow.com will have complete coverage of the storms and the impact in your neighborhood.

The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Arlington until 9:00 p.m. Storms are approaching the area from the northwest.

Seeing the storm damage in D.C. and Montgomery County this morning brought back memories of the storms that ripped through Arlington and Alexandria one week ago.

One storm-related incident in particular still has people talking a week later — the parking lot full of cars with blown-out windows at the Shirlington Bus Station.

How exactly did it happen? Nobody seems to know for sure. But one reader recently sent us this dramatic account of what she saw as the storm rolled through Shirlington.

Just as FYI – it was closer to 20 vehicles that had the glass blown out of their vehicles, not 6. And the storm took out their back glass, side windows and in some cases even the windshields… Working in the ANSER bldg across from the bus stop – employees watched as the trash cans and paper vending machines were swirled up as high as the 5th floor – then dropped like lead weights back to the ground.

The straight line winds in Shirlington were at around 70 miles per hour.

This morning’s storms did not slam Arlington with the widespread flooding and power outages with which the District is still coping.

The weather did, though, prompt Rosslyn to cancel its lunchtime farmers market and concert today.

The storms also knocked out power in some areas. As of 9:30 a.m. there were 309 Dominion customers without power in Arlington. A number of traffic lights are reported to be on flash.

During the storm, several passengers got stuck on the elevator at the Courthouse Metro station, TBD reported. It’s not clear whether the elevator problem was caused by the storm.

At least a half dozen cars had windows shattered in the parking lot of the Shirlington Bus Station Thursday afternoon. It’s unclear whether the breakage was the result of a brazen daytime vandalism or whether it was caused by the strong storms that split trees in half just blocks away from the station.

In some cases the glass appeared to have exploded outward in small pieces, which does not seem like a likely pattern for vandalism. On the other hand, some cars seemed to escape the damage and the large glass panes in the bus station appeared intact.

The bus station is at the bottom of a long hill that leads up to Fairlington, the Arlington neighborhood hardest hit by the storms.

A police spokesperson did not have any information about the shattered glass.

One theory is that the storm brought with it a sudden, violent change in air pressure that caused the windows to “explode.” If you have any other theories as to what happened, we’re all ears.

As chainsaws buzzed, residents walked the streets of Fairlington tonight, surveying the damage from this afternoon’s wicked storms. At least 40-50 trees were down in the area, according to Arlington County spokesperson Diana Sun.

Fairlington appears to be Arlington’s hardest-hit neighborhood. It was hard to find an older tree without large branches missing. It was hard to find a block without at least one car damaged.

Much of the area was still without electricity four hours after the storm, but the outages were spotty — some of the neighborhood’s garden apartment buildings had power while others across the street were dark.

Almost a dozen people gathered near Fort Reynolds Park, where a line of utility poles had split in half and fallen to the ground. A car with a Dominion logo on the side briefly parked nearby, then drove off ten minutes later.

Resident Bill Nesper said the storm brought back memories of living on the east coast of Florida during Hurricane Andrew.

“I looked outside and it looked like a hurricane,” he said. “The rain was going sideways… there were tree limbs everywhere.”

Nesper said the damage was caused so suddenly that “it must have been a quick set of wind gusts that did it.”

Nesper’s neighbor, who had two cars damaged by falling tree limbs in the storm, said the damage was close to the destruction Hurricane Isabel caused in Richmond, where he had been working as a police officer at the time.

One resident said training from her time in a war zone came in handy during the storm.

“I didn’t go near the window… having been in a war zone they said don’t get near the windows,” she said. “It was so black and dark… I almost went into the closet.”

Stores and restaurants closed early in Shirlington Village, which lost power during this afternoon’s severe thunderstorms and hasn’t seen the lights come back yet. Small branches and leaves littered the tree-lined main drag of Campbell Avenue.

At least one bar valiantly stayed open, however. Bistro Bistro was serving bar patrons by candlelight and flashlight, while groups of people casually sat drinking beers on the outdoor patio.

Just down the street, a big backup was forming at the intersection of South Quincy Street and Campbell Avenue, where the traffic light was dark. Traffic on a nearby on-ramp to I-395 was moving, but very slowly.

In a small south Arlington neighborhood wedged between I-395, Glebe Road and Four Mile Run, all hell broke loose when the storms passed through this afternoon.

“It was a tornado, definitely,” said resident Paschal Nash, as she inspected the tree branches scattered throughout her yard. ”It started with just light rains, then rains increased but then the winds… you just started hearing [stuff] crashing, like breaking… I watched the tree actually split half because of the lightning.”

Down the street, near the corner of South Four Mile Run Drive and South Cleveland Street, a large oak tree fell and came crashing through the house of one of Nash’s neighbors. The house will likely be condemned, said a county employee on the scene.

“You heard [the wind] pick up, like you can actually here it drag something… I had never heard that before… it was definitely a mini tornado, no way in hell it was anything else,” Nash said.

Down the street, there was another large tree uprooted. It crushed a fence as it came crashing down across two front yards.

A man across the street said his mother lived in the house, but wasn’t at home at the time. He said he couldn’t see much because of the downpour, but afterwards he saw the extent of the damage.

“Everything just came down,” he said.

So far, the National Weather Service has not indicated that the storm that ripped through Arlington displayed the characteristics of a tornado.