Lightning — Danville (c), Virginia

2019-08-01 · near Danville, Danville (c), Virginia

Event narrative

A lightning strike struck an apartment complex, caused a fire, and resulted in fire damage to a 12-unit apartment structure in Danville City. In addition to the structure fire, another lightning strike struck a tree a few blocks from the apartment fire. This caused the tree to fall apart and crush a car and take down power lines.

Wider weather episode

A slow moving upper level trough moving through the area, combined with weak steering flow aloft, and ample heat and humidity allowed for numerous slow-moving severe thunderstorms to develop across Virginia, bringing large and damaging hail and severe wind gusts. A barn was destroyed by severe wind, lightning caused an apartment fire and hail up to two inches in diameter fell in Roanoke City resulted in thousands of dollars in damage across Virginia. In addition, very heavy rainfall occurred especially in parts of northeast Bedford County and the City of Lynchburg where 3 to 4 inches of rain fell in several hours causing some flash flooding.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (36.6299, -79.3778)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 848287. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.