Tropical wind and rainstorm hits east coast

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Leslie Hudson is in Virginia Beach where a coastal storm is bringing strong winds, overwash and flooding.

Transcript

00:00For now, we want to touch base with our crews.

00:02We're going to be talking to Leslie Hudson, who's been monitoring this storm.

00:06Leslie, you've been in all of it here.

00:07Obviously, we can see the wind right now.

00:09Bold choice to keep your hair down.

00:11We've got to pull it on up.

00:12Give us a bun.

00:13And, Leslie, we talked about this yesterday.

00:15You said your cameraman, who was from that area, said this is as bad as he's seen it.

00:23Yeah, he has grown up here his entire life and was telling me that he was really surprised

00:29in some of the areas that we went to yesterday.

00:32Now, 24 hours ago, I could not be standing where I am right now.

00:36It was completely overwashed.

00:37There was a tidal flood through this area.

00:39You can see over my shoulder, still dealing with some decent waves here,

00:43but this is not what we had yesterday.

00:45The big story was the tidal flooding that came through Virginia Beach throughout the afternoon yesterday.

00:52And, Mark, off in the distance there, just if we pan a little north,

00:55we see a guy with his handy-dandy jewelry.

00:59I forget what those are called, but, you know, looking for some gold,

01:02some sunken treasure probably from those floods that we got yesterday.

01:06Some pretty decent standing water in Virginia Beach and particularly in Norfolk.

01:13Now, I spent the bulk of the day.

01:14Let me show you some of the video that I shot yesterday.

01:16I spent the bulk of the day in Norfolk, which is just about 12 miles west of here.

01:21And, you know, the folks that were in this area, this is called Colonial Town,

01:26said that this also was the highest flooding they've seen since Hurricane Isabel in 2003.

01:32So even though this area of Colonial Town is known to flood,

01:36the significant standing water was more than they were expecting.

01:40And as you can see, there was car after car driving through the flooded waters.

01:45We know the mantra, turn around, don't drown.

01:47But I saw at least 20 cars flood out yesterday in the few hours I was over there,

01:53and I was moving around.

01:54So a lot of people were trying to get through those standing waters.

01:57It did not work out for them.

02:00The tidal flooding sent those residents scrambling for higher ground in Colonial Town.

02:05And as they tried to navigate through those floodwaters, those cars were getting washed out.

02:10They also compared this flooding, by the way, to Hurricane Joaquin in 2015.

02:14And some of the residents say it rivaled that inundation of both of those hurricanes in the last couple of years.

02:21I mean, this area here does flood, but not where it's, you know, not continuous.

02:30I haven't, I don't think I've ever seen that playground flooded.

02:33You know, we'll get some in the streets.

02:34Like this street here on Llewellyn, that's pretty frequent that that will creep in from the river here.

02:39But not this entire parking lot, not the park over here.

02:43So, yeah, I was pretty surprised to see how bad it was.

02:45So, this past weekend also marked the king tides here in the Virginia Beach-Norfolk area.

02:54So, not only did we have the coastal tropical wind and rainstorm, they also had king tides,

03:00which also aided in that higher inundation than what they were anticipating.

03:04It kind of exacerbated the coastal flooding in this area.

03:08The crews are continuing to monitor hotspots this morning.

03:12We still have that persistent onshore flow.

03:14There is also still a coastal advisory here in the Virginia Beach area until about 9 a.m.,

03:19which it will drop after that.

03:21The officials are urging drivers still to be careful.

03:24There are some areas with some minor low-lying flooding in the immediate area here, but nothing too bad.

03:30They do have barricades out with some of the off-ramps that you can't get off to

03:34because there's standing water in this area.

03:35And, again, that coastal flood warning up until 9 a.m.,

03:38and there is also a high surf advisory that's still in effect until around 6 p.m. tonight.

03:44And they're also, of course, urging folks to stay out of the water

03:47because of the dangerous rip currents, by the way.

03:50And I will tell you, significantly cooler today.

03:52We are currently in the 60s.

03:55We are definitely feeling that push of drier, cooler weather,

03:57and, of course, conditions expected to markedly improve within the next 12 to 24 hours here along Virginia Beach.

04:04Reporting live on Leslie Hudson, back to you.

04:07All right, Leslie, we appreciate it.

04:08Thank you so much.

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