Tag: Jerry Stenger

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In brief: Out of business, second wettest, medically deficient and more

staff photo

Knock, knock. Who’s [not] there?

Sears. Sweethaus. Performance Bicycle. And Brown’s Cleaners, just to name a few recent local closings that left community members shocked, and in at least one case, without their clothes.

The closing of Sears at Fashion Square Mall heralds the demise of one of America’s most iconic retailers, known for its mail-order catalogue more than 100 years before Amazon appeared on the scene. The Charlottesville store has been at the mall since it opened in 1980.

Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce president Elizabeth Cromwell says it’s not unexpected that companies will move away, merge, or close their doors for good—but it matters how they do it.

“There is a natural cycle for business communities,” says Cromwell. “How these organizations communicate changes to their customers is critical.”

While most of the closings were abrupt, Brown’s is of a different magnitude.

Signs suddenly posted on the doors of its four locations on Christmas Eve directed customers to check the legal section of the Daily Progress for information on where and when to pick up their held-hostage dry cleaning. It then took about a week and a half for any information to be published on how to reunite people with their belongings.

If you’re wondering, clothes can be picked up from 8am to noon at the High Street location, and 1:30pm to 5:30pm at the Preston Avenue location January 7-11 and January 15-18. Dry cleaning left at the Millmont Street and Ivy Road stores can be picked up on High Street. All furs will be at the Preston location.

And a GoFundMe has been started for the reported 34 employees who learned on that December holiday that they no longer had a job. At press time, it had raised approximately $7,000.

Quote of the week

“I didn’t want to be that person that has to see a sports psychologist … [but] it didn’t just help me on the court, it helped me in life.”—UVA basketball player and ACC Player of the Week Kyle Guy talks about anxiety and stress to SB Nation

In brief

Legal Aid roll

After persuading a judge to issue an injunction on the suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid fines, Legal Aid Justice Center scored another victory in federal court January 2, when Judge Norman Moon ruled the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women had violated a 2016 settlement agreement to improve its “constitutionally deficient” medical care. At least four women have died since the settlement, and Moon gave the prison 45 days to correct violations.

Legendary coach dies

George Welsh UVA athletics

Former UVA football coach George Welsh, who led the Cavaliers to a pinnacle unseen since he retired after the 2000 season, died January 2 at age 85. Hall of Famer Welsh took over the Virginia program in 1982 and guided the team to 12 bowl games, two ACC co-championships, and a 9-10 record against Virginia Tech, which has since beaten UVA for 15 straight seasons.

Another A12 sentence

Daniel Borden, an Ohio man who was 18 when he came to the Unite the Right rally, will serve three years and 10 months for his part in the brutal parking garage beating of DeAndre Harris. The prosecutor and judge agreed Borden appeared “gleeful” in videos taken after the attack, but his age and guilty plea mitigated the sentence. Two others charged in the event are serving six and eight years.

‘Mass exodus’

Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney says the department is currently down 22 officers, and salary, lack of take-home cars, post-August 12 attitudes, and the demeanor of those on the Police Civilian Review Board are to blame, according to the Daily Progress. Outgoing Sheriff Chip Harding suggested Brackney could be the problem, prompting an impromptu press conference by City Manager Mike Murphy.

Election season

Three people have announced runs for open seats on City Council now held by Wes Bellamy, Kathy Galvin, and Mike Signer. Community organizers Don Gathers and Michael Payne launched campaigns January 8 for the June 11 Dem primary nomination, and Sena Magill joined the race January 9. No word yet from the incumbents on their plans.

By the numbers

Second-wettest year ever

skyclad ap

Record-breaking rainfall made 2018 the second-soggiest year since McCormick Observatory started keeping records 118 years ago. The week before Christmas, 2018 held the No. 4 spot with 68.69 inches, but over the holiday more than three inches drenched the area to put the year’s total at 72.14 inches, barely eking by No. 3, 1937, and over two inches shy of the No. 1 year—super-moist 2003, which followed worst-drought 2002.

And in top 25 wettest years since 1900, six of those have happened since 2000. Time to invest in rain boots?

Top five rainiest years

1. 2003 74.55″

2. 2018 72.14″

3. 1937 72.07″

4. 1948 69.72″

5. 1972 66.03″

Numbers provided by Jerry Stenger, director of the State Climatology Office at UVA.

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Few Florence floods: But local area hit with power outages

It’s too bad Saturday’s UVA football game against Ohio University was moved to Vanderbilt Stadium in Nashville—with little rain, the Cavs probably could have played at home. Photo by Jack Looney

Grocery store shelves in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were picked clean last week by people preparing for Hurricane Florence’s worst. But come this week, those cases of water, boxes of batteries, and jars of peanut butter had gone largely unneeded.

While a tornado left one person dead in Richmond, and significant flooding threatened folks in Nelson, Green, and Madison counties, the immediate local area was relatively unscathed.

“Florence could dump a foot of rain on already saturated ground,” predicted state climatologist Jerry Stenger before the hurricane, when Virginia was projected to be in its northeast quadrant. “We’re going to have trees down all over the place.”

Stenger was right. And wrong.

The majority of area rain fell Sunday, September 16, through Monday, September 17, and by Monday morning, the National Weather Service had issued a flood warning for the city and county. Local areas reported receiving between a half and two inches of rain, with minor flooding reported in Albemarle.

In the state, approximately 500 roads were temporarily closed, with eight of those in Albemarle, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Approximately 3,800 Dominion Energy customers in Charlottesville and Albemarle County were out of power from 10am Sunday, September 16, until Monday morning, when about 2,300 of those people had their electricity turned back on, according to Dominion spokesperson Daisy Pridgen. Remnants of Florence hit the local area the hardest around this period, and she says the outages were largely the result of trees falling on power lines.

At press time, the energy company’s interactive power outage map showed only 27 and 181 customers were still without electricity in Charlottesville and Albemarle, respectively.

The Virginia State Police are already offering tips for next time, such as dialing 511 before driving for the latest updates on road conditions and closures, and always using headlights while windshield wipers are activated—not only because you can see better and you become more visible to other traffic, but because that’s the law.

And perhaps the most important tip, and one you’ve likely heard before: Turn around, don’t drown.

More than half of all flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into hazardous water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state police add that it only takes 12 inches of rushing water to carry away a small car, and two feet of it can wash most vehicles down a roadway.

“It’s never safe to drive or walk into flood waters,” says VSP spokesperson Corinne Geller. “No matter how shallow you might think it is.”

Storm statistics

  • 1 death in Richmond
  • ½ to 2 inches of rain in Charlottesville
    and Albemarle
  • About 500 road closures across the state
  • Nearly 4,000 local power outages for Dominion Energy customers
  • $60 million authorized by Virginia
    Governor Ralph Northam to spend in response to Florence

*Numbers provided by the Virginia Department of Transportation, National Weather Service, and Aubrey Layne, the state secretary of finance

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Hurricane expert: Jerry Stenger’s Florence predictions

Jerry Stenger is always popular during natural disasters. Photo Fariss Samarrai

When there’s a weather disaster in the forecast, Jerry Stenger is on everyone’s speed dial. We didn’t catch up with the director of the State Climatology Office at UVA until yesterday afternoon, and even though Hurricane Florence has shifted south, here are his predictions for the storm—and tips on what to eat.

“For us, the big problem is the massive amount of rainfall and wind,” says Stenger. “Florence could dump a foot of rain on already saturated ground. We’re going to have trees down all over the place.”

That means that parts of the state—like here—could be without electricity “much like 2003 with Isabel, which caused a huge outage.” His mother, who lives in Richmond, was without power for two weeks, he says, an unpleasant situation experienced by many in Albemarle County.

“I fear there could be a prolonged period without power,” says Stenger, who notes that power company crews are going to be working from South Carolina first and then heading north.

The heavy rain can lead to flash flooding and urban flooding with backed up storm drains. “The storm is forecast to slow down as it hits landfall, which will exacerbate” the situation, he says.

Virginia will catch the northeast quadrant of the storm, which will start expanding once it hits land and pile the water up. “This is not good,” he says.

So what does a hurricane expert do to get ready for a monster storm?

“I bought these packages of Indian food that keep without refrigeration and don’t need to be heated up,” says Stenger.

And because he’s on a well, “I’m filling every container with water that I have.” Stenger is also filling gas cans, because with widespread electricity outages, service stations can’t pump gas.

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UPDATED: Ivy flood victims found

The city’s Riverview Park, which is nestled between homes in the Woolen Mills neighborhood and the Rivanna River, was severely flooded. While the park has reopened to the public, its entry point to the Rivanna Trail remains closed. Photo by Skycladap.com

The second victim’s body has been found after a couple’s Toyota Prius was swept away by flash flooding on the night of May 30 near the intersection of Old Ballard Road and Martin Farm Lane in Ivy.

At about 12:30pm today, a canine search crew detected a scent about one-third of a mile downstream from where the couple was last observed. Search crews removed debris and mud, eventually uncovering the body, according to Albemarle County spokesperson Jody Saunders.

Searchers had covered more than 7.2 miles of waterway with extremely dangerous terrain and conditions from the Old Ballard Road crossing to the South Fork Rivanna River Reservoir, said Jody Saunders. Weekend rain made search conditions even more difficult.

“There are countless downed trees tangled in the waterways and huge piles of vegetative debris,” Saunders said Tuesday, before the last victim was found. “Consequently, local volunteers are not being sought to aid the search effort.”

The first body was found on the morning of May 31 near Ivy Drive in Ivy Creek, and the Prius was located about 20 yards from Old Ballard Road. A BMW that was swept away on the same road was also located today, completely submerged in approximately four to six feet of water, near where the Prius was found, according to Saunders

The driver of the BMW escaped the vehicle at the time of the flood and was rescued.

Eggleston described how the Prius was “tossed and turned and overturned” by the “swollen, raging river.”

As much as nine inches of rain fell in the Ivy area, and the areas west of U.S. 29 saw seven inches and eight inches. Climatologist Jerry Stenger calls the estimates “certainly believable,” though only three inches were collected at the McCormick Observatory and the Charlottesville Albemarle Airport.

“It’s very unusual to get this much rainfall in such a short period at a given location,” Stenger says. “It is, nonetheless, not too unusual to see rainfall of this magnitude occurring somewhere when strong thunderstorms roll through.”

A Dickerson Road water main break and flooding at the North Fork Rivanna Water Treatment Plant put about 1,200 customers under an advisory to boil all of their water. That was lifted over the weekend.

Gary O’Connell, executive director of the Albemarle County Service Authority, said at the time that it was just a precaution. “We have no indication that the water’s not safe.”

Eggleston said multiple bands of heavy rain on the night of May 30 “overwhelmed our local and regional resources,” and Albemarle County declared a state of emergency around 11:45pm so rescuers could request additional resources. A water rescue team from Lynchburg was called to help search for the victims.

At least 10 water rescues were made, and more rain was in the forecast. The chief said an “unstable weather front” would be moving through the area.

“We’re possibly preparing for a repeat of last night,” he said on May 31, adding that any additional rain would make waterways swell to the same dangerous levels.

“Please do not drive through standing water,” he said. “Turn around.”

Nearly 40 county roads were closed, according to Albemarle Police Chief Ron Lantz, who asked drivers not to go around road closed signs. Holkham Drive, a private road in Ivy, collapsed, leaving about 20 families trapped until a temporary exit was made through a neighbor’s property. At press time, Ragged Mountain Road was the only public road still closed in the county, according to VDOT spokesperson Will Merritt.

A Norfolk man died around 7:20am May 31 on Interstate 64. Virginia State Police responded to a two-vehicle crash in the westbound lanes at mile marker 113, where 36- year-old Ahmed Shelton was heading toward a rest area when he ran off the right side of the road and hit a disabled tractor-trailer. The crash is still under investigation and it is unclear whether it was weather-related.

The Charlottesville-UVA-Albemarle Emergency Operations Center is asking residents to report flood damage by calling 971-1263. So far, damage assessment teams have responded to more than 500 reports in the Ivy area.

County residents are allowed free disposal of vegetative debris through June 9 at the Ivy Material Utilization Center on Dick Woods Road.

Updated Wednesday, June 6 at 4:10pm.

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Bummer crop: Warm temperatures worry farmers

Tim Henley’s peach crop at Henley’s Orchard was already threatened before the latest cold blast and snow. Rammelkamp Foto

Last month was the warmest February on record with an average temperature of 47.7 degrees, based on numbers from the McCormick Observatory dating back to the 19th century. While many are happy to ditch their winter coats early, a nice day this early in the season is a nightmare for some farmers.

“It’s really going to affect us badly,” Tim Henley, owner of Henley’s Orchard in Crozet, said last week. “I’m expecting this next cold blast is pretty much going to wipe out all of our peaches.”

On Henley’s 1,000 acres of farmland, 25 acres are reserved for growing 35 varieties of apples (including fan favorites such as Albemarle Pippin and Black Twig), and 18 acres are reserved for more than a dozen types of white and yellow peaches. With recent warm temperatures pushing 80 degrees, a majority of the buds in the peach reserve at Henley’s have already bloomed, or at least swollen to a fragile state. Cool temperatures, even just at night, could kill them for the whole season.

And it’s happened before. During a good year, Henley says he and his team produce between 4,000 and 5,000 bushels of the pitted fruit. Last year, due to similar conditions, they had none.

“It’s fairly depressing,” he says. “We just try to be optimistic. We’ll probably get a lot more apple trees pruned this year than usual,” he adds, because they likely won’t have to spend time thinning peach crops.

Over at Bellair Farm, an 850-acre plot 11 miles south of downtown Charlottesville, the warm weather isn’t all bad news.

Farm manager Jamie Barrett says he usually starts selling community supported agriculture shares in mid-May, but if temperatures continue to stay up, he may be able to start earlier. Because he grows mostly annual vegetables, (think: eggplant planted seasonally, not apples yielding from the same trees each year), warmer weather means an opportunity to get out into the fields earlier to prep for the growing season.

“We can get things in the ground a little earlier,” he says. “For us, there are certain crops like strawberries we worry about. And our garlic is taller than usual this time of year. A hard frost might knock that back.”

Barrett planted his strawberries last spring because they take a year to bear fruit.

“We should expect that to start in May or June and we’ll begin picking at that time,” he says. “If they start blooming now, and it gets real cold at night, we’re going to lose those blossoms and lose our strawberry crop. It’s always something we worry about. It’s just getting harder and harder to manage things with the weather being so volatile.”

And though most of the Bellair crops will be okay, he sympathizes with the orchards that are getting hit.

“The peaches and the apples are not coming in like they’re used to. It all comes back to the weather now,” Barrett says. “It’s great if people can have that in mind and really support those local businesses when they need it.”

Jerry Stenger, the director of the climatology office at the University of Virginia, doesn’t have good news for the farmers hoping to ward off a frost. In fact, he says the worst is yet to come.

Through the end of February, the area had seen only 2.9 inches of snowfall, when an average for that time period is more than a foot—about 14 inches. The snow that started March 13 added less than an inch to the season’s accumulation.

“We’re not anywhere near free of the snowfall season,” he says. “This time of year, chances of getting more measurable snow are about 50-50. This is not too bizarre and it’s not unexpected that we’ll have some more snow coming along.”

Stenger points to early March 2013, when 15.5 inches of snow were dumped on the city.

But it won’t be too much longer before we’re in the clear, he says. “Now by the time we get to April, the chances of any decent snowfall are really diminished.”

Feverish February

Is it time to break out the shorts and tank tops? Information gathered from UVA’s McCormick Observatory ranks last month as the hottest February on record.

  • February 2017: 47.7 degrees on average
  • Average February temperature: 39.1 degrees
  • Winter snowfall through end of February: 2.9 inches
  • Average winter snowfall through end of February: 14 inches
  • February 2017 seventh driest on record: .78 inches of precipitation
  • Average February precipitation: 3.07 inches of precipitation