Virginia’s coast is heading into a stretch of heavy rain, strong wind gusts and coastal flooding this week, with the worst water expected around Wednesday morning’s high tide and then again as flooding peaks Thursday. AccuWeather has placed most of Virginia under a severe weather alert from early Tuesday morning through Thursday afternoon.
The Coastal Flood Watch matters now because the threat is not just to the shoreline. Many locations along the coast in Virginia are expected to reach moderate flood stage, and some could reach major flood stage, especially around the lower Chesapeake Bay, including Norfolk. Southeastern Virginia should prepare now, as it may be among the hardest-hit areas.
That broad risk window is why people are searching for the watch today. Storms are forecast to affect major U.S. cities along the mid-Atlantic coast from Tuesday through Friday, and Virginia Beach could also see significant erosion. The same system could bring flash flooding across Virginia, including the Shenandoah Valley, Central Virginia and Winchester, while the coast deals with tide-driven flooding layered on top of rain and wind.
Alyssa Glenny said the storm may be capable of producing tropical-storm-force wind gusts later this week, even though it is not expected to organize into an official tropical entity. She said the rain, wind and coastal impacts would stay largely the same regardless of that classification, though a narrower band near the center of the storm’s circulation could see stronger gusts. That is the friction point for coastal communities: the system does not need an official label to cause major trouble.
If the storm develops into a full-blown nor’easter, major travel disruptions are also possible. For Virginia, the most important question is not whether the name changes, but how high the water gets when the tide turns Wednesday morning and again on Thursday, when the worst of the flooding is expected to land.
