What a difference a deluge makes

May 17--"Flood, reported by trained spotter."

That was the note about Ghent in the National Weather Service's storm report after Friday's downpour, a deluge that drowned downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth with heavy rain at high tide.

It didn't take a trained observer to see floodwater trapping cars in underpasses and on city streets, or overwhelming storm drains.

Much of South Hampton Roads saw 2 to 5 inches of rain, with up to 6 inches in spots, said Larry Brown, NWS meteorologist. Hardest hit were Norfolk, Portsmouth and parts of Chesapeake near the Great Dismal Swamp.

Suffolk saw about 1 to 3 inches of rain. Virginia Beach got off easier, with parts seeing 1 inch or less.

The hardest rain fell between 8 a.m. and noon, Brown said, at a rate of 2 to 3 inches an hour.

____

Pictures Flooding across Hampton Roads

____

Late Friday afternoon, Portsmouth police were still reporting "major flooding" in the 1000 block of Horne Ave., the 900 block of South St. and at the intersection of Elm Avenue and Race Street.

Norfolk police reported 30 calls for help, and Portsmouth police estimated at least two dozen vehicles were disabled by the flood, which remained high well into the afternoon.

Floodwater trapped parked cars along residential streets and, in some locations, drivers drove vehicles into standing water too deep to escape. Towing companies -- where the phones rang steadily all morning -- were caught by surprise.

"We knew it was going to rain, but we didn't expect it to be this bad," said Teva Powell, a dispatcher at Affordable Towing and Recovery of Norfolk. By 11 a.m., the company had gotten 40 to 50 calls for help -- three times its normal volume.

Many were dialing from inside stranded vehicles.

"We can't get to a lot of them," Powell said. "We've got to wait for the water to go down, or our trucks could get stuck, too. We can only do so much when there's 2 feet of water. We don't have any scuba divers here."

A Portsmouth school bus had to be towed off a median on Frederick Boulevard after the driver tried to avoid floodwater and got stuck, Superintendent David Stuckwisch said.

In Norfolk and Chesapeake, school parking lots flooded, and leaks were reported at a few buildings.

The problem was that heavy rain fell as the tide was rising, overwhelming storm drains and leaving no place for the water to go.

"It's just typical," said Youssef Khalil, Portsmouth Public Works director. "When the tide is high and a lot of water drops, it's going to flood."

Effingham Street just outside the Downtown Tunnel was blocked, he said.

Norfolk also closed a number of streets in lower-lying areas, said Jeneen White, spokeswoman for the city's Public Works. The city had vactor trucks, which can clear out drain blockages, and pump trailers working on Berkley Avenue and Chesapeake Boulevard.

"In a city at or below sea level, rain like this puts a lot of water on the roadway," she said.

Norfolk city spokeswoman Lori Crouch said the recent intersection improvement project at Brambleton and Colley avenues was effective. The project raised the roadway along the Hague.

"Water did not accumulate at all," she wrote in an email.

Midmorning, much of the setting for the in ­Ghent was knee-deep in water, said Elena Montello, show director. Volunteers covered soaked areas of the lawn with more than 160 bags of mulch, half of it donated by Home Depot, she said, and the park was drying out well. The outdoor art show will open as planned, at 10 a.m. today.

But it was great weather for ducks.

Roads around the Chrysler Museum of Art flooded, but its latest pet project, Florentijn Hofman's "Rubber Duck," was unfazed. The 40-foot inflatable sculpture will premiere around sunrise today in the Hague inlet across from the Norfolk museum.

Chris Craychee, project manager for duck installation, said the crew labored through the deluge, using a crane to submerge weights to secure the duck's pontoon base. "Everyone was soaked to the bone," he said.

The torrents didn't significantly slow business, many employers said.

The port of Virginia and MacArthur Center reported business as usual.

Some employees at Old Point National Bank had "memorable" trips to work, Vice President Erin Black said, but four of the five South Hampton Roads branches opened on time. The one on Granby Street in Ghent opened "just a few minutes" after 9.

Early-morning business was down at The Coffee Shoppe in the flood-prone Olde Towne section of Portsmouth, shift manager Tammy Seymore said. In the first hour, the coffeehouse had about three customers, compared with the usual 20 to 25.

"Once it let up significantly," Seymore said, "we had more customers coming in."

Employees at the Geico insurance company will work through the weekend, processing flood insurance claims, said Joe Thomas, Geico's regional vice president in Virginia Beach.

The good news is, the storm has cleared out, and skies should be at least partly sunny for the next few days. Highs both today and Sunday should be in the low to mid-70s, with rain unlikely.

"It'll be a much quieter weekend into early next week," Brown said.

Staff writers Gary Harki, Phil Walzer, Teresa Annas, Joanne Kimberlin, Cindy Clayton, Cherise Newsome, Mike Connors and Diane Tennant contributed to this report.

___

(c)2014 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)

Visit The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) at pilotonline.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services