Debris Flow in Lynchburg (c) County, Virginia

Runoff from heavy rainfall caused a portion of the hillside along 12th Street to collapse onto the road, blocking both lanes of traffic. The road was closed for multiple weeks to clear the debris and perform work to stabilize the hillside to prevent additional debris flows. The property damage estimate is the cost of removal of the debris and the necessary repair work.

A trough of low pressure was situated from Buckingham County, VA southeast through Alleghany County, NC during the evening of the 15th, while a cold front was advancing eastward across the mountains. A wave of low pressure passing along the front over western North Carolina served to increase low level winds into the 20 kt-25 kt range from the south, tapping into deep moisture. By 8 pm EDT, precipitable water values across Campbell and Appomattox Counties had risen as high as 2.1 inches, which is around 2 standard deviations above normal for mid-July for central Virginia per NWS gridded climatology estimates. Instability was also observed to be extremely high, with surface-based CAPE values in the 2,500 to 3,000 J/Kg range. By 10 pm EDT, storms that had made steady progress southeast across Bedford County were beginning to stall along the surface trough stretching across Campbell and Appomattox Counties. Steady flow of moisture from the south continued to feed into the line of storms, with cells beginning to train over the same locations. High instability continue to support rainfall rates within the stronger cells of 4+ inches per hour. By 11 pm EDT, CREST Unit Streamflows were beginning to exceed 600 cfs per mi^2 across the southern portion of the City of Lynchburg into northern Campbell County, persisting as such through 1 am EDT on the 16th, when heavy rain exited the area. FLASH 3-hour Average Recurrence Intervals were observed approaching a 200-year rainfall event just north of the Town of Rustburg. This resulted in considerable flooding across Campbell county and Lynchburg.