Heavy rains this week across the Williamsburg area may have caused some to remember the storm of Aug. 18, 1989, which dropped 6.72 inches on the city in 2½ hours.
That day, a slow-moving thunderstorm contributed to the flooding of a Colonial Parkway tunnel near Colonial Williamsburg, leaving about 5 feet of water on the parkway at the southern end on the Williamsburg Lodge side.
Two cars were flooded out, as was an ambulance that tried to enter the tunnel to assist the vehicles. Three motorists were stranded when high water engulfed their vehicles. All parties were rescued, according to newspaper accounts.
The total rainfall for that event was 11.3 inches in six hours in Williamsburg, while the National Park Service reported 12.5 inches on the battlefield during the same time frame.
Williamsburg holds the state’s single-day, 24-hour rainfall record of 14.28 inches, which occurred on Sept. 16, 1999, according to the National Weather Service. The rain was part of Hurricane Floyd, which struck the city of Franklin especially hard and flooded its downtown when the nearby Blackwater River overflowed its banks.
The state’s unofficial single day total was 27.35 inches in Nelson County on Aug. 20, 1969, associated with the remnants of Hurricane Camille.
Within the past week, the Williamsburg area, like much of Hampton Roads, has been hit almost daily by thunderstorms and rain squalls.
The Williamsburg water treatment plant, which has kept daily rainfall records for decades, reported nearly 5 inches of rain from July 20 through July 25.
In the summer “there is usually instability present in the atmosphere as a whole and the cumulous clouds as a result of convection bring showers spread over a wide area,” said Roman Miller, a weather service meteorologist in Wakefield.
The result, Miller said, is that the rain fall “can vary quite a bit” with a single storm. Therefore, one area of Williamsburg could get a toad-strangler — very heavy — rain, while several blocks away could have no rainfall at all.
Miller said the weather service’s co-op weather reporting site, just north of the city, has reported 10.37 inches of rain for the month of July. According to Weather Spark, an online site that collects weather data from all over the word, the average monthly rainfall for July in the Williamsburg area is 5.57 inches.
The August 1989 storm resulted from “a stalled cold front from southwest-southeast along the North Carolina line. It interacted with a low pressure systems along the coast from Norfolk to Georgia, pumping moisture into the state,” according to the weather service in Richmond as reported in the Aug.19, 1989, edition of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Moisture that was expected to move westward into the Virginia mountains was instead drawn into the low pressure system, the weather service added. The result on that mid-August day was heavy rain in eastern Virginia.
Specifically, 11.3 inches of rain fell in Williamsburg during a total of six hours on Aug. 18.
“Virtually every street near the heart of the city had standing water at some time during the storm, which was the heaviest between 9 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.,” the newspaper reported. “Historic Duke of Gloucester Street was under nearly two feet of water with many intersections blocked.”
Then-Fire Chief Robert Bailey said that by the time he arrived at the parkway tunnel, “water was cascading down on the parkway from Francis Street and three people had taken shelter on the tops of their automobiles. There was shoulder-deep water all around.”
For the rest of the month, southeastern Virginia could see some drier days, but more rain isn’t out of the question, the National Weather Service said. Saturday, Sunday and Monday “were looking to be pretty dry” with storm chances returning in the mid-next week, Miller said.
The National Climate Projection Center, which provides forecasts 6-10 and 8-14 days out, has indicated there is an “above average” chance for rain in the next two weeks.
Wilford Kale was bureau chief for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and covered the Aug. 18, 1989, storm for the paper.
![If it were not for the efforts of a William & Mary president in the 1960s there would not have been a marine science program to benefit from the school’s recent largest financial gift. Davis Y. Paschall, president 1960-1971, was instrumental in the development of the substantial academic programs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at nearby Gloucester Point on the York River, The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was established in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory as a joint effort between W&M and the Virginia Commission on Fisheries (now the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. It was initially organized […]](https://www.pilotonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/6SCYSOUXX5GSHC7UWSYZ2RSEAU.jpg?w=408 "If it were not for the efforts of a William & Mary president in the 1960s there would not have been a marine science program to benefit from the school’s recent largest financial gift. Davis Y. Paschall, president 1960-1971, was instrumental in the development of the substantial academic programs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at nearby Gloucester Point on the York River, The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was established in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory as a joint effort between W&M and the Virginia Commission on Fisheries (now the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. It was initially organized […]")
