Strong storms hit the area again

**SWVA-Football** · July 31st, 2007, 11:01 PM

It's official: Just a really strong storm, no tornado.

Only one known fatality, thankfully.

**Unchained** · July 31st, 2007, 11:05 PM

We were stuck in traffic a few hundred yards from the Castlewood red lights shortly after it happened - it was a mess. We knew something was terribly wrong when they brought in the backhoes. It took about an hour but we got detoured up Memorial and around back to 58.

There were uprooted and snapped trees all over.

When we got to the lights (or where the lights used to be) we saw what we thought was maybe a mobile home overturned & destroyed or something (considering the size of it - it was a confusing sight). The roof of the car that was hit was sheared back.

Then we noticed about 2/3 of the roof of the Pizza Town shopping area roof was gone - that's what was in the road. It must have come from behind that area, considering how the car roof was sheared, how the traffic lights in front of the building were gone.

We had hoped no one was killed in the car or building. Sorry to hear that's not the case.

**SWVA-Football** · July 31st, 2007, 11:14 PM

As was just said on the Channel 5 News: It was likely a "Wet Microburst."

**imported_trumpet1988** · July 31st, 2007, 11:14 PM

There were some storms that had just missed BSG I believe though it's basically been sunny about the whole day. I did see some clouds that looked somewhat dark. But the storms kept building up around Wise/Scott/Russell and nothing happened here. Dang.

**SWVA-Football** · July 31st, 2007, 11:24 PM

Pictures of the damage from WCYB's website for those of you who didn't get to see them on the Channel 5 news:

(Captions are taken directly from WCYB.)

"Pizza Town`s roof, which was blown a good 40-50 yards over the highway."

"Cleaning up debris from the twister in Castlewood."

"Pizza Town damage after microbuster/twister."

"Roof of local business blown off and into main road in Castlewood, VA this evening."

As you can see by the captions, there is still some suggestion that a twister could have caused the damage. I strongly believe that it was indeed a microburst, however, especially after doing some research on them and seeing more evidence about the "line" of damage they leave.

These are definitely some great pictures, even though I would like to see pictures of some of the downed trees, flooding, etc.

**beamer_ball** · July 31st, 2007, 11:50 PM

I would much rather a small tornado go through than something such a microburst.....

**beamer_ball** · July 31st, 2007, 11:53 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: UTVols2</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Is a microburst the same thing as a downburst? </div></div>

A microburst is a smaller scale downburst (macroburst's are larger).

http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_is_a_downburst.htm

**SWVA-Football** · July 31st, 2007, 11:54 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: beamerball</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I would much rather a small tornado go through than something such a microburst.....

</div></div>

Yeah, because:
1. You can't see a microburst (especially a "wet microburst" considering it's going to be raining hard as hell)
and
2. The damage is so random, you never really know what it's going to do next.

That's the scary thing about a microburst .. it's pretty much invisible so you can't really track it and know what's going to happen next. Sure, it can go in a straight line, but since there was a lot of damage elsewhere, that goes to show that the line of damage isn't the only deadly place to be.

**knight_67** · August 1st, 2007, 12:50 AM

we were leavin work around 4:00, had to cut a tree up to get it out of the road (over on Baker's Ridge), the more we got out of there, the worst it got, got to the red lights near chevron around 4:50, the roof was covering both sides of the fourlane pretty much, and a halliburton truck had the cab of it crushed in, finally got out around 6:30.
the Chevron has a decent sized hole in it where a piece of wood went completely through the brick

**SWVA-Football** · August 1st, 2007, 12:55 AM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: knight_67</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
the Chevron has a decent sized hole in it where a piece of wood went completely through the brick </div></div>

Holy cow. [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/shocked.gif[/img]

Just imagine if you were over there pumping gas when that thing came through .. you'd probably have debris flying everywhere towards you!