Virginia Beach, on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, receives around 1,190 mm (about 47 inches) of rain a year, with direct exposure to Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms from June through November posing the city’s most serious weather risk. The area’s notoriously flat, low-lying terrain, combined with a high water table, means that even routine heavy rain can cause significant nuisance flooding, a problem that worsens considerably when storm surge from an approaching tropical system pushes water in from the ocean at the same time. Because rain and coastal surge can compound each other here, radar tracking of approaching systems is treated as a critical tool. NWS Doppler radar KAKQ (Wakefield, VA) covers the region.
Learn more: Hurricane Season Radar Guide · Open the full Rain Map