After rain pours, temperatures beginning to soar

By Bryan McKenzie

Published: June 5, 2008

As if the injury of an intense Wednesday night thunderstorm wasn’t enough, Central Virginians are now suffering the insult of near-record heat.

Temperatures Thursday climbed above 90 and are expected to soar near 100 by the end of the weekend. That has sparked concerns of heat-related illness as temperatures climb to mid-summer levels for the first time this year.

Charlottesville officials say recreational centers will be open and stocked with water for residents who need to cool off.

“A lot of people don’t have dependable air conditioning in their homes and it can become a dangerous situation,” said Ric Barrick, city spokesman. “We want them to know there’s a place they can go.”

According to weather agencies, Central Virginians can expect high temperatures and humidity for the next few days.

“There’s a big dome of high pressure off the East Coast that’s pretty much acting like a giant heat bubble,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Andrew Ulrich. “It’s a very common weather pattern during the summer but not so common this early in the season.”

Ulrich said that today should be hot, “but decent,” with highs in the low to mid-90s. He said that Saturday and Sunday will be in the upper 90s, and nearly 100.

“When you’re looking at 99 on Saturday and 97 on Sunday, you’re looking at some pretty uncomfortable temperatures,” he said. “Heat advisories are issued when humidity levels are at a certain point and that shouldn’t happen during the weekend, but it’ll still be pretty nasty.”

The short heat wave should end by Tuesday and temperatures are expected to return to the seasonal average of mid-80s, Ulrich said.

Temperatures rose Thurs-day as area residents cleaned up after a Wednesday storm that downed trees and power lines and closed roads.

Power was down all day to large portions of the Forest Lakes and Hollymead areas, leaving traffic lights along U.S. 29 from Polo Grounds Road to Forest Lakes either blinking or dark. Earlysville Road from Panorama Farms to the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport was closed all day Thursday, as was Stony Point Passage from Route 20 to Route 231 (Gordonsville Road).

The worst damage was reported in Fauquier County, where numerous secondary roads were closed Thursday due to fallen trees tangled in utility lines.

Wade Crawford knows all about fallen trees. While he and his wife waited in the basement of their Proffit Road home, Wednesday’s storm knocked down at least a dozen trees, bouncing them off his Mazda MPV and onto the corner of his house.

“We were watching the weather and it started to rain,” Crawford recalled, standing in his limb-strewn yard as chainsaws wielded by friends whined around him. “It really started blowing and there was a thud and my wife said something hit the house. That’s when we went into the basement.”

When he came up, trees were strewn about the yard like God’s own toothpicks.

“They were all knocked over in the same direction, like it may have been one of those microbursts [weather people] talk about,” Crawford said.

His guess may be good. National Weather Service personnel tried to determine what weather events did what damage as a string of storms stretched across the state.

“There are a lot of damage reports all the way through Maryland and into D.C.; it was a widespread event,” said Jared Klein of the National Weather Service in Sterling.

The storm dropped as much as 1.6 inches of rain near the Charlottesville airport and as much a two inches near Scottsville and Esmont. Early Wednesday, weather service officials sent out a notice to emergency response organizations warning them that although the skies were clear, a major storm was likely.

“It was very predictable because of the humidity, the temperature and the front that moved through,” Klein said.