Flash Flood — Galax (c), Virginia

2019-04-19 · near Galax, Galax (c), Virginia

Event narrative

Railroad Avenue and Fair Street in Galax were closed with water flowing across the roadway.

Wider weather episode

An area of heavy rainfall with embedded thunderstorms developed across the mountains of southwest Virginia dropping 2 to 3.5 inches in the heaviest bands over several hours on the afternoon of the 19th. Some flash flooding was reported in Pulaski and Galax. In Pulaski the COOP site (PSKV2) had a 24-hour total of 3.28 inches (ending at 700 AM on April 20th), most of which fell during a 6- to 10-hour period from late morning to early evening of the 19th. For this site was the highest on record for any April day with nearly complete precipitation records dating back to 1940 and 6th highest for any day. The old April record was 2.99 inches on April 26, 1978. For a 24-hour duration, the 3.28 inches falls in the 10-year (0.10 annual chance of occurrence) 90-percent confidence interval (3.25-3.75 inches), but it was a much more unusual event for the shorter duration in which the rain actually occurred, approximately 9 hours according to a nearby automated rain gage. The COOP site at Galax, VA (GAXV2) had a 24-hour total of 2.47 inches ending at 700 AM on the 20th which was the 5th highest April 1-day rainfall on record at this site. A CoCoRaHS gage north of Galax (VA-CR-3) measured 3.30 inches for the same period.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.6551, -80.9180)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 821314. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.