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It wasn't supposed to happen that way, at least that's what them weather people said.  They said there'd be a chance of late evening thundershowers; otherwise, you know, it was just another hot muggy afternoon, around 95 degrees.  Fact is, they warned boaters to watch out for that milk bowl thing—when everything looks the same out there.  You can't see no horizon.  I've seen it happen when you got a lot of haze and humidity and not much of a surface breeze.  'Course, them weather guessers say it happens when the air and water temperatures are the same, or some sort of concoction like that.  You ever heard of the water temperature being 95 degrees out in the bay?

It was two in the afternoon when one of them big cumulonimbus clouds started building—juttin’ its ugly, lopsided head out to the east-northeast.  Betcha thought I don't know such fancy words about clouds, but I do....  One of them weather guessers taught me when he was talking to us folks about weather out on the bay.  But that old cloud...it must have been 40,000 feet high, straight up.

It just spawned itself out there on the James River—there between Hampton and Portsmouth, breeding off that hot air, it so thick with moisture that you could cut it with a knife—I swear! The visibility got a lot better, and I easily saw it from my boat, it being parked at Willoughby Bay Marina.  Didn't seem to be moving along much at first; just kept on building up them clouds, especially them dark ones, and that's when you could see them lightning bolts dancing around.  Right then I knew this would be a spiteful storm.  The Coast Guard broadcast over the marine radio about a bad thunderstorm, but it was too late for many of them nearby boaters.  Anybody with eyes could see the damn thing was dangerous and knew to get outta the way.

 

When it started moving, it moved fast, maybe 25 miles an hour.  Its speed—no one expected that.  And nobody on the water stood a chance if they was in its path.  It moved across Willoughby Spit, moving along the west side of this here marina, and it got so doggone dark...and the wind gusts must’ve clocked 100 miles an hour.  I saw one small pickup truck do cartwheels in that there parking lot.  Then the rain and hail hit.  Hail big as golf balls tore the bejesus out of everything.

 

That monster storm passed through in ten minutes, and then it was over.  One minute it was storming like all get out, and the next minute it was as quiet as a mouse in a church pew.  I watched it heading down the bay, stirring up whitecaps and trouble.  I swear I saw a waterspout out there beyond the Ocean View pier!

 

I hear tell that storm did some right serious harm out on the bay, but I didn't see none of that.

— A Waterman's Eyewitness Account of the August '97 Storm —