by Tom Chillemi and Don Richeson –
Pete Wright of Deltaville had a sleepless night as Tropical Storm Isaias blew through Middlesex County early on Tuesday, Aug. 4.
He was awakened about 2:30 a.m. by an alarm from a weather “app” reporting possible tornado activity to the south in Hampton Roads.
Wright was glued to WAVY-TV’s all night coverage. About 5:18 a.m. the Norfolk TV station reported a cell moving north over the Gloucester Point area at a high rate of speed, he said.
The TV station reported a possible tornado touched down near Bavon in Mathews, about 15 miles south of Wright’s home, at about 5:45 a.m. “I could tell all along it was headed right toward us,” he said. “I continued going back and forth between TV, my cell phone and radar apps and also my laptop and radar images. From all of it put together, I am pretty sure it went awfully close, perhaps over Stingray Point light.” The National Weather Service reported it had detected a tornado in the air in Deltaville around 5:30 a.m., but it is not believed to have touched down or caused any major damage, other than downed trees.
About 7:30 a.m., Wright clocked wind gusts as high as 76 miles per hour at his Stingray Point home.
As Isaias started moving through Middlesex County around dawn Tuesday, numerous trees were blown down and many lost power. Dominion Energy’s website reported 4,427 of its 10,242 Middlesex customer locations were experiencing outages around 9 a.m. That number decreased as the day wore on and crews were able to replace downed lines and snapped power poles, but more than a thousand Middlesex locations didn’t have their power restored until more than eight hours later. A downed pole and power lines in Urbanna blocked Cross Street just north of Virginia Street for most of the day Tuesday and many trees were downed in the Delta Shores community near Deltaville.
A house in White Stone was severely damaged when the top floor of the house was blown off the first story. The house was unoccupied.
Wright, an amateur meteorologist, said that the jet stream pushed Isaias through the area quickly. “That was good for us, because it didn’t hang around and cause more damage,” he said.
Hurricane Isaias made landfall in the Carolinas and was downgraded to a tropical storm on Tuesday. The fast moving storm continued up the east coast cities of Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia, headed for New York and eventually on into Canada.
