As of 9:54 a.m., the Virginia Department of Transportation advises that traffic is now backed up for five miles on Interstate 81 northbound due to a tractor trailer accident at milemarker 126.3 near Elliston.
For more traffic updates, see the VDOT web site for road conditions.
The Lantern, a live music venue, restaurant and bar in Blacksburg, is closed until August 1.
The venue at 211-B Draper Road opened in July 2008. Originally, the restaurant was open during the day for lunch, but scaled back its hours earlier this year.
"Music is the main focus," said co-owner Brian Turner shoritly after The Lantern opened last summer. "We're not a bar with music as much as a music venue with a bar and food."
Turner and the Lantern's other owner, Dan Chastain, are both from Raleigh, N.C., but had talked about opening a music venue in a community with fewer venues than Raleigh.
The space had preiviously been a Cinco de Mayo Mexican restaurant, as well as various nightspots before that.
E-mails seeking further information about the closing were not returned.
--Amy Matzke-Fawcett
The New River Valley is under a flash flood watch today.
The National Weather Service has issued the advisory for a wide swath of Western Virginia, including Montgomery County, Radford, Pulaski County, Floyd County and Wythe County.
The weather service advisory says: "Heavy rain over the past few days has saturated the ground in many locations. Additional showers and thunderstorms are expected to develop by this afternoon and then continue into the evening. Very heavy downpours associated with some of these showers and storms could result in at least localized flash flooding."
For more, see this weather alert.
UPDATE: We also have this photo that a reader in Christiansburg shares of flooding in her backyard.
Do you have weather news or photos from the New River Valley? If so, you can share at newriver@roanoke.com
As of 9 a.m., both lanes of Interstate 81 northbound at milemarker 126.3 near Ellison are blocked due to a tractor-trailer accident. Northbound traffic is being detoured off at Exit 118, US 460 East and back onto I 81 Northbound at exit 132, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
VDOT says that traffic is backed up for one mile and warns that motorists can expect "major delays."
For more traffic updates, see the VDOT web site for road conditions.
A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge handed Anthony Edward Adams a 13-year prison sentence this afternoon for a September 2007 crash that killed Gregory Jackson.
For more on the story, see this story by Tonia Moxley.
If you're planning to follow Radford High School's baseball team in the regional tournament today, you should hit the road a half hour earlier than planned.
The start time has been changed from 6 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. That's because the Covington-Glenvar game, originally set for Glenvar, has been moved to the James River field because Glenvar's is too wet. The Covington-Glenvar game is set for 8 p.m., and to make time for that, the Radford-James River game has been moved a half hour earlier.
For details on other postponements, click here.
Today's Extra section of The Roanoke Times has a story about the Young Actors Co-op in Floyd County, which is present an original show -- "MEN2B." In case you don't have the paper handy, here's the link.
There's also a photo gallery of the young actors. At left we see Jessica Spangler, with Avery Foster, Bethlehem Cherrix and Alexandra Hicks in the background.
Photos by Kyle Green, The Roanoke Times
The Virginia Tech Storm Chase 2009 team is in Texas now. On Tuesday, the chasers saw a rare sight -- a storm split in two, and one of the baby storms produced some spectacular rotating clouds, including a possible funnel cloud dropping down.
Kevin Myatt, weather columnist for The Roanoke Times, is one of the co-leaders of the trip. He has an update on Tuesday's chase on his Weather Journal blog. UPDATE: He's now added photos.
The storm chasers also have their own blog here, including a GPS coordinate where you can track the group's location in relationship to any storms blowing up.
For background on the trip, and who's on it, see this post.
At least two regional games in high school sports tournaments have been postponed because of weather.
Radford's baseball game at James River and the Giles boys soccer game at James River have been delayed until Wednesday.
