1993 Monster Storm, Lynchburg, Virginia

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Lynchburg News & Advance

24 July 2008


"Lynchburg residents recall monster storm of '93,"

By Darrell Laurant.


Some people don�t take thunderstorms seriously. Those people were probably not living in Central Virginia in the summer of 1993.

It took only 15 minutes for a storm on June 4 of that year to leave a lasting impression.

�It came out of Bedford County,� recalled Larry Jackson, then the director of customer service for Appalachian Power, �hit Lynchburg, went on into Campbell County and all the way out past Appomattox.�

Jackson was sitting inside Movies 10 in Candler�s Station when the power went out and the screen went blank.

�I had no idea what had happened,� he said. �I walked outside, and the first thing that hit me was the smell of pine. The pine trees at the apartments nearby had just been shredded. Then I got in my car and drove toward home and saw the lights from the Liberty (University) football field lying on the ground.�

Hubert Morgan, who lived and still lives in Windsor Hills, was sitting in his carport when a menacing tower of clouds approached just before 6 in the evening.

�Normally, I would have just stayed there and watched it,� he recalled, �but something about this one scared me. It was just as black as night, and I headed for the basement.�

Which was fortunate, because a large oak tree fell on Morgan�s carport and pierced the glass table at which he�d been sitting.

�It probably would have killed me, if I hadn�t moved,� he said.


Only one death was directly attributed to the storm, but some estimates had 20 percent of the trees in certain areas along its path felled. More than 70,000 local residents lost power, and some were in the dark for more than a week.

According to the National Weather Service, the winds in that storm reached upwards of 70 mph. Thunderstorms are quite capable of producing �straight-line winds� (in excess of 58 mph) and �microbursts� (powerful downdrafts, especially lethal to aircraft). The one that slammed into Central Virginia 15 years ago might have spawned both.

�Straight-line winds from thunderstorms can be just as strong as any tornado you�re likely to see in Central or Southwest Virginia,� said Phil Hysell of the National Weather Service�s Blacksburg office. �Unfortunately, people don�t always react the same way to severe thunderstorm warnings as they do to tornado warnings.�

After all, what can a thunderstorm do?

Well, in Lynchburg on June 4, 1993, it toppled the steeples of two downtown churches, First Baptist and Court Street Baptist. It ripped the rear wall off the Academy of Music on Main Street. The final damage toll topped $35 million.

�I was once in a microburst in Wichita, Kansas, that measured wind gusts of 116 miles an hour,� Hysell said.

For Larry Jackson and hundreds of APCO workers, the �big wind� of June 1993, meant little sleep and lots of overtime.

�Looking back at how we handled things then, it was like we were in the Stone Age,� Jackson said. �These days, we have so many call centers that the odds are against your not getting through to a human being. In �93, we took all the calls out of our office, and the odds were against your not getting a busy signal.�

The utility�s troubleshooters hadn�t been called out in force, Jackson remembered, �since the ice storm of 1979. We had a procedural handbook sitting on a shelf, but we hadn�t been doing any drills or preparation. Now, we do.�

Meanwhile, Hysell said, �with the installation of Doppler Radar, which came in �95, we�ve increased the advance-warning time from an average of 6� minutes in 1993 to 19 minutes now.�

A radar beam can bore into a storm to find out the wind velocity and whether or not it is packing hail.

�You really should take cover if you�re in the path of one of these things,� Hysell said. �Go in the basement, or put as many walls as possible between you and it. Stay away from windows.�

Just ask Hubert Morgan.