| Episode Narrative |
What began as an unseasonably cold, even snowy week for late April, ended with very heavy rain, especially across southeast West Virginia and southwest Virginia. The front that brought the very cold weather to the region early in the week was returning north of a warm front on the 26th. This, combined with a strong upper-level disturbance tracking across the Ohio Valley and an influx of Gulf moisture, set the stage for the development of showers and thunderstorms . Rainfall amounts across much of southeast West Virginia and southwest Virginia were in the 1.0 to 2.0 inch range for the 24-hour period from midnight Thursday April 26th to midnight Friday April 27th. However, the most significant rainfall fell across areas of southwest Virginia, west of I-77, and in southeast West Virginia. In these areas, several locations received rainfall of 2.0 to 3.0 inches in the 24-hour period ending at midnight June 27th, with parts of Bland county receiving in excess of 5.0 inches of rain. In West Virginia, the heaviest rain fell in Greenbrier county in the Rainelle and Caldwell areas, where several roads were closed and some were washed out.
During the afternoon and evening, scattered showers and thunderstorms redeveloped across southeast West Virginia and southwest Virginia in an increasingly warm, humid air mass. Some of these became severe producing quarter to ping-pong ball-sized hail. |
