We had a clap of thunder about an hour ago and scared the hail out of me (ohhhhhhhh puns, how I love them). When the line of thunderstorms rolled through here, I was in school, so I have no idea how bad it was (seeing that they are sound-proof fortresses of doom).

I'm pretty impressed by how quickly the rain drops off. Just going through Lake Ridge now. Couldn't even catch a break from my allergies on a rainy day.

How many more days until winter? ;)

Litle or no thunder at Ballston, but plenty of rain today. Seems to be clearing out from west to east.

CNN showing pretty significant damage in Suffolk, VA. At least one dead from tornado.

Just watched a little bit about those storms too, quite unfortunate. The damage looks pretty nasty. I've had 1.67" of rain since Saturday night, this rain is definitely welcome.

Harpers Ferry picked up 2+" over past 2 days, on top of 5+" from the previous weekend. (Yes, I need a new *real* gauge.) Never seen it so wet here. My garden is a jungle and my well must be very happy. If this keeps up, maybe I can switch from quick showers to deep bubblebaths! It's the little things in life... :)

Was there a tornado watch issued for the storm in Suffolk?

Tornado damage reports in Suffolk/Norfolk area are here.

There was a watch issued as the storms developed. Not a lot of lead time compared to the "norm."

One dead and 200 injured reported by Reuters and Virginian-Pilot (with video).

I have a question for the Gang....I know here in Arnold the Saturday night we had storms roll through that contained large amounts of cloud-ground lightening, torrential downpours, and even hail...the storm lasted at least an hour, a house about a mile away was even struck and caused a fire. However, NWS didn't issue a severe thunderstorm warning.
This afternoon with the storms that rolled through we had a brief downpour, about 15 minutes of heavy rain, I didn't hear any thunder, nor did I see any lightening, yet a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for my area.
My question is why was one issued this afternoon but not Saturday night? Was it because of the time frame? Could the fact that today's storm occurred during the afternoon rush hour when there were large amounts of traffic have influenced Sterling's decision to issue a warning? Just curious, I know NWS has a set criteria for when watches, advisories, and warnings are issued(and in my opinion the storms here Saturday night seemed much more severe than the one that rolled through today)...but what other factors go into whether or not to issue one?

thanks Ian.

3:15pm is not a lot of lead time on tornadoes that were hitting between 3:30-4:30pm. I wonder what made this storm different and trickier for weather forecaster.

While they issued the watch 15min before the storm struck, did they ever issue a warning? A watch just means conditions are ripe... a warning mean is there is a tornado spotted.

Seems like this forecast needs to be restudied.

The evening news was so sad to watch... you could literally see that path that the tornado took from the damage.
www.mtwc.blogspot.com

Tornado warning was issued for Suffolk area at 3:11 pm, before the watch came out. SPC's last day 1 outlook before the storms did seem to downplay the risk of tornadoes, but did mention the possibility.

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