Flood — Greenbrier, West Virginia

2024-05-24 · near Caldwell, Greenbrier, West Virginia

Event narrative

The railroad tunnel on Route 63 was flooded and impassible due to runoff from heavy rainfall flooding the creek that shares the tunnel with the road. One water rescue was required for a vehicle stranded in the tunnel.

Wider weather episode

An upper level disturbance triggered a line of showers with embedded thunderstorms south of an east to west oriented stationary front south of the Great Lakes region. This area of precipitation passed across Greenbrier County during the early morning hours of May 24th. Precipitable water values ahead of the disturbance were observed to be around 1.2 inches per SPC Mesoanalysis, which is around the 75th percentile for late May. Despite the activity moving to the east at around 25 mph, the showers and storms produced rainfall amounts ranging from 1.75 to 2.5 inches over a roughly three hour period across southern Greenbrier County, with rainfall rates at times of three to locally six inches per hour. Runoff from the rainfall was sufficient to cause multiple smaller streams across the southern portion of the county to experience minor flooding. There are multiple tunnels under an elevated railway in the southern portion of the county where a road shares the tunnel with a stream. Flooding of these streams caused the tunnels to flood, thereby making them impassible to traffic. One automobile became stranded in a flooded tunnel, with the vehicle's occupant(s) requiring assistance to evacuate the tunnel to higher ground.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (37.7779, -80.3947)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1176354. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.