Umm, no -- but people who saw the strange-looking funnel cloud touching ground in Blacksburg could easily have been mistaken.
Kevin Myatt shows off a reader photo of the cloud and explains why it's not a tornado in this post on his Weather Journal blog.
The National Weather Service in Blacksburg has issued a flash flood warning for Floyd County until 12:45 p.m. today.
For details, see this breaking news item from the newsroom of The Roanoke Times.
If you have weather news to report, you can leave a comment below, or share news and photos at newriver@roanoke.com.
The National Weather Service reports that Copper Hill in Floyd County has measured 1.76 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. That more than anywhere else in the New River Valley.
Stations in Montgomery County were all showing less than one inch.
The full list of weather stations and their rainfall totals can be found here.
If you have weather news or photos to share, let us know at newriver@roanoke.com
The National Weather Service reports that the North Fork station in Giles County has measured 2.30 inches of rain the past 24 hours -- and that the New River Valley airport in Pulaski has measured 2.01 inches.
That's more than double any other figure in the New River Valley. Next highest are:
* Butt Mountain, in Giles County: 1.19 inches
* Mountain Lake, in Giles County: 1.07 inches
* Back Creek, in Pulaski County: 1.00 inches
All other stations were measuring less than an inch of rain in the past 24 hours.
You can keep up with rainfall totals on this site.
Also, over on our Community Current blog of reader-submitted news and photos, Kevin Light of Riner shares two spectacular photos of the storm clouds over Montgomery County on Thursday.
Meanwhile, weather columnist Kevin Myatt has this post on his Weather Journal blog about when the current rainy period will come to an end.
Tennis will go on today at Virginia Tech's indoor courts, but the state tournament games in baseball, softball and soccer at Radford University have been postponed to Saturday and Sunday.
For more on the postponements, click here.
New River teams competing in the tournament are Blacksburg boys soccer, Radford boys soccer, Radford girls soccer, Radford boys tennis and Radford girls tennis.
We have photos of those teams in previous action in the sports section of our new Community Current blog of reader-submitted photos.
As of 8:15 a.m. Friday, the National Weather Service reports that Mountain View Church in Floyd County has measured 2.8 inches of rain in the past 24 hours -- the highest amount for any station in the New River Valley.
Copper Hill in Floyd has measured 2.44 inches.
The highest figure in Montgomery County is in Shawsville, with 1.72 inches.
You can find the rainfall totals for Montgomery, Floyd and other localities here.
If you have weather news or photos to share, you can leave a comment below or email us at newriver@roanoke.com
We've just updated our database of Radford crimes with the latest report, which runs from May 10 through May 30.
You can view a map of the last three weeks of Radford crime here, or search the database yourself in our Datasphere site of searchable data. You can search by date, by offense, or by address.
The Virginia Tech Storm Chase 2009 team ran into some big storms in South Dakota over the weekend, including one where they spotted a wall cloud -- one of those huge storms that happen in the Midwest.
They're also now heading home.
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt, one of the co-leaders on the trip, has an update on his Weather Journal blog.
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.
Most of them anyway.
Some have headed back to Blacksburg, the rest continue chasing storms -- and they're now in Missouri, with an eye toward the Upper Midwest.
Weather columnist Kevin Myatt, one of the group's co-leaders, has this update on the Virginia Tech Storm Chase 2009 team.
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.
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
