On Saturday afternoon, Woodland Farms resident Suzanne Olsen was in her house folding sheets when she began to hear a loud roar.
“I could see debris going out from my neighbor’s house, she had all the pine trees that came down every which way,” Olsen said. “They said it wasn’t a tornado, but it was close to it.”
Olsen’s neighborhood and nearby Elmwood subdivision sustained the brunt of the damage from a band of fast-moving, violent storms that blew through the Historic Triangle on Saturday afternoon. Wind gusts of up to 82 mph were recorded in Toano, near Croaker, while gusts of 50 mph were recorded at Jamestown Island.
Bridget De Rosa, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield, said no tornado touched down in the Historic Triangle. The band of storms caused two tornadoes in Isle of Wight County and one in Hampton.
Olsen said that for a short time Saturday afternoon, it sounded as if a tornado was blowing through her subdivision. Her two 1,400-pound horses outside were moved 5 or 10 feet by the winds, which battered the gates to her fences open and closed as it kicked up bark and other debris.
“It was like a train wreck,” Olsen said of the commotion from the storm. But just as quickly as it struck her part of the county, it continued its journey east.
“We heard the roar roar roar, and then it just blew and then it was gone just like that,” she said.
The storms prompted widespread power outages in the Historic Triangle, with nearly 5,000 customers in James City County without power after it left the area. York County had about 425 customers without power after the storm hit, while no customers in the City of Williamsburg lost power immediately after the storm.
By 7:45 a.m. Sunday, power was restored to almost everybody in the area. As of Monday, power has been restored throughout Hampton Roads.
De Rosa said this type of storm is not uncommon. She said a warm air mass from the south — which led to the warm weather Saturday — provided the ingredients for severe weather because of a nearby cold front.
James City-Bruton Volunteer Fire Department Spokesperson Billy Apperson said his department responded to calls throughout the area on Saturday afternoon. Both Apperson and James City County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bob Ryalls said nobody was injured because of the storm.
Apperson said power poles were broken by falling trees in the area around Woodland Farms and Elmwood. Several roads in those neighborhoods were also blocked by downed trees, though no houses sustained any significant structural damage.
He said a barn off Forge Road in Toano lost its metal roof, with debris scattering for half a mile across an adjacent field. Apperson’s department operated from a command post set up in the parking lot of York River Baptist Church off Croaker Road, near where it crosses Interstate 64.
Ryalls said his department responded to some reported downed trees and power lines. Units responded to several calls, including on Jolly Pond Road, Rochambeau Drive, Canal Street and Woodlands Road. He said storms like Saturday’s tend to produce many alarm calls, as the intense winds can set off sensitive equipment.
Assistant Chief Paul Long of the York County Division of Fire and Life Safety said units from his department responded to some downed trees and power lines in the county but that there were no injuries and no reported trees on structures.
“We were extremely fortunate,” Long said. “We did have a dangerous weather system that went through and extremely high wind gusts, but we were very fortunate that we didn’t have the type of reported damage that our neighbors encountered.”
Williamsburg Fire Department Spokesperson Eric Stone said his department did not receive any calls for service due to the storm. He said units did respond to an arcing wire at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday but that it’s unclear if that was related to the storm.
