‘Surreal’ 40-Minute Storm Drowns Minor League Baseball Field

Ian Locke, director of communications for the Norfolk Tides, has never seen anything like what happened after less than one hour of rainfall in Norfolk, Virginia on Thursday.

“It was so surreal to see the whole baseball field completely underwater like that,” he said.  “Our fields usually keep up with draining the water, but it was just too much water too fast, and we couldn’t keep up.”

The local forecaster said 3.41 inches of rain fell in less than an hour in Norfolk and on Thursday afternoon.  That’s more than half the amount of rainfall Norfolk usually sees in an average July. The rain started at 3:30 p.m. and lasted about 35 to 40 minutes, according to Amy Valdez, a Virginia Beach battalion chief.  In some areas, golfball-sized hail fell and winds reached up to 80 mph.

Climate change makes precipitation events more extreme, and increases the likelihood that extreme precipitation events will occur in some areas of the world. That finding has been confirmed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, the National Climate Assessment, and multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers.

‘Surreal’ 40-Minute Storm Drowns Minor League Baseball Field