Right now it looks like just another drizzly day outside, but Arlington County is warning residents about the threat of severe weather later this afternoon. From Arlington Alert:
There is a chance of severe weather this afternoon and evening in the immediate D.C. metro area which may escalate quickly. Please stay alert.
Update at 6:45 p.m. — For once this summer, the initial storm prediction did not pan out. There’s still a chance that storms will develop later, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Arlington and the greater Washington area.
Strong storms are expected to roll through the area some time between 3:00 and 5:00 tonight. The severe thunderstorm watch expires at 10:00 p.m.
ARLnow.com will have complete coverage of the storms and the impact in your neighborhood.
The National Weather Service has issued a severe thunderstorm watch for Arlington until 9:00 p.m. Storms are approaching the area from the northwest.
Seeing the storm damage in D.C. and Montgomery County this morning brought back memories of the storms that ripped through Arlington and Alexandria one week ago.
One storm-related incident in particular still has people talking a week later — the parking lot full of cars with blown-out windows at the Shirlington Bus Station.
How exactly did it happen? Nobody seems to know for sure. But one reader recently sent us this dramatic account of what she saw as the storm rolled through Shirlington.
Just as FYI – it was closer to 20 vehicles that had the glass blown out of their vehicles, not 6. And the storm took out their back glass, side windows and in some cases even the windshields… Working in the ANSER bldg across from the bus stop – employees watched as the trash cans and paper vending machines were swirled up as high as the 5th floor – then dropped like lead weights back to the ground.
The straight line winds in Shirlington were at around 70 miles per hour.
This morning’s storms did not slam Arlington with the widespread flooding and power outages with which the District is still coping.
The weather did, though, prompt Rosslyn to cancel its lunchtime farmers market and concert today.
The storms also knocked out power in some areas. As of 9:30 a.m. there were 309 Dominion customers without power in Arlington. A number of traffic lights are reported to be on flash.
During the storm, several passengers got stuck on the elevator at the Courthouse Metro station, TBD reported. It’s not clear whether the elevator problem was caused by the storm.
NWS: No Sign of Tornado in South Arlington — Despite photos of car windows blown out and mass tree devastation, a team from the National Weather Service found no evidence that a tornado caused the worst of the damage in South Arlington. More from Fox 5.
Arlington FBI Impersonator Sentenced — Arlington resident Brenna Marie Reilly, 29, who told people she was the director of the FBI’s Forensic Division and later convinced a neighbor to quit his job and serve as her assistant, was sentenced on Friday. She will serve 30 days in prison, four months of house arrest and three years of probation. More from the Washington Examiner.
Cat Fight Breaks Out Over Roaming Pets — In June, the Sun Gazette ran a opinion piece from someone who wasn’t too happy with his neighbor’s cat roaming in his yard. “Do I need my neighbors’ cat in my backyard when my wife and daughter are allergic?” he asked. Now, courtesy of the Huffington Post, we get a counterpoint. Blogger Tamar Abrams is apparently the owner of the offending feline. She shoots back: “For the record, his dog has peed on my yard. His dog has barked many times. But I can’t imagine complaining about that.”
Flickr pool photo by Amberture
As of 3:00 p.m., 228 Dominion customers in south Arlington are still without power as a result of Thursday’s storm. No word on when their power might be restored.
As of 10:45 a.m., 3,087 Dominion customers were without power in Arlington.
Most of those outages appeared to be in the hard-Shirlington and Fairlington. Dominion expects power to be restored to most customers by 10:00 tonight.
At least a half dozen cars had windows shattered in the parking lot of the Shirlington Bus Station Thursday afternoon. It’s unclear whether the breakage was the result of a brazen daytime vandalism or whether it was caused by the strong storms that split trees in half just blocks away from the station.
In some cases the glass appeared to have exploded outward in small pieces, which does not seem like a likely pattern for vandalism. On the other hand, some cars seemed to escape the damage and the large glass panes in the bus station appeared intact.
The bus station is at the bottom of a long hill that leads up to Fairlington, the Arlington neighborhood hardest hit by the storms.
A police spokesperson did not have any information about the shattered glass.
One theory is that the storm brought with it a sudden, violent change in air pressure that caused the windows to “explode.” If you have any other theories as to what happened, we’re all ears.
As chainsaws buzzed, residents walked the streets of Fairlington tonight, surveying the damage from this afternoon’s wicked storms. At least 40-50 trees were down in the area, according to Arlington County spokesperson Diana Sun.
Fairlington appears to be Arlington’s hardest-hit neighborhood. It was hard to find an older tree without large branches missing. It was hard to find a block without at least one car damaged.
Much of the area was still without electricity four hours after the storm, but the outages were spotty — some of the neighborhood’s garden apartment buildings had power while others across the street were dark.
Almost a dozen people gathered near Fort Reynolds Park, where a line of utility poles had split in half and fallen to the ground. A car with a Dominion logo on the side briefly parked nearby, then drove off ten minutes later.
Resident Bill Nesper said the storm brought back memories of living on the east coast of Florida during Hurricane Andrew.
“I looked outside and it looked like a hurricane,” he said. “The rain was going sideways… there were tree limbs everywhere.”
Nesper said the damage was caused so suddenly that “it must have been a quick set of wind gusts that did it.”
Nesper’s neighbor, who had two cars damaged by falling tree limbs in the storm, said the damage was close to the destruction Hurricane Isabel caused in Richmond, where he had been working as a police officer at the time.
One resident said training from her time in a war zone came in handy during the storm.
“I didn’t go near the window… having been in a war zone they said don’t get near the windows,” she said. “It was so black and dark… I almost went into the closet.”
Stores and restaurants closed early in Shirlington Village, which lost power during this afternoon’s severe thunderstorms and hasn’t seen the lights come back yet. Small branches and leaves littered the tree-lined main drag of Campbell Avenue.
At least one bar valiantly stayed open, however. Bistro Bistro was serving bar patrons by candlelight and flashlight, while groups of people casually sat drinking beers on the outdoor patio.
Just down the street, a big backup was forming at the intersection of South Quincy Street and Campbell Avenue, where the traffic light was dark. Traffic on a nearby on-ramp to I-395 was moving, but very slowly.
