CHARLESTON, W.Va. — National Weather Service Meteorologist Tom Mazza worked the overnight shift at the Charleston Weather Bureau on the night of June 23,2016. He recalled rain in the forecast and some strong showers before he clocked out, but never expected to see what happened as the day moved along.
“It was definitely an over-performer. It was a smaller scale event where everything just came together,” he said.
When it all came together it was doom for a wide swath of West Virginia. The storms moved across the Ohio River and into West Virginia in a diagonal direction. It started between Parkersburg and Ripley, travelled southeast through Clay and Northern Kanawha County. The storms flooded out Clendenin and devastated most of the surrounding communities in northern Kanawha County and parts of Clay County. The system crossed the mountains and continued on that diagonal path into the Gauley River watershed flooding out Richwood and downstream of Summersville Dam. The system poured into Fayette and Greenbrier Counties along the Meadow River and Howard’s Creek. Communities like Rainelle, Rupert, and White Sulphur Springs got more water than their towns could handle.
“That’s what you call a ‘northwest flow’ thunderstorm event. It kind of trained along that path which is what helped crank up the precipitation amounts with that, ” said Mazza.
He said the northwest flow is unusual for this time of year. Typically those happen during the winter and bring snowfall and ice events. This one in the summer packed a lot of moisture and humidity.
It happened fast. Swift water rescue teams were suddenly pressed into service with more calls than they could answer. For many it would be too late. Homes washed away with people inside. Lives were lost and the flood caused catastrophic damage to hundreds of homes and businesses. By the time the water started to recede, crews were searching debris piles along river and stream banks for missing people. A total of 23 lives were lost to the flood. Some of the missing bodies wouldn’t be found for days.
“I worked the midnight shift that night and stayed over a little bit that morning,” Mazza explained. “When I woke back up I was surprised all of what was going on, especially the immense river rises we had.”
Training thunderstorms along the narrow path were the death knell.
“That’s the death knell anywhere. You get storms training over areas of poor drainage or terrain like West Virginia has with valleys and hollows and so forth and the water just piles up once you get a bunch of it,” said Mazza.
It became one of the most catastrophic floods in West Virginia History.