re: Remembering Hurricane Camille: 50 years ago today (Aug 17)

I was in college at VPI and in Blacksburg it rained and rained as Camille went over us the next night. It was only later (two days) that we heard what had happened when the lift of the Blue Ridge Mountains had dumped on the area south of Charlottesville. A week later our Ground Water Geology class was allowed into the area.

The link below gives a good idea of what the folks up there were dealing with, since this was totally out of their realm of experience. Thirty three bodies never recovered.

To see the scars on the mountains, there are pictures on google images
(LINK ]

One scientist early on site was trying to figure out how much rain had fallen. At one site where the farmstead was no longer there, there was a trashcan still standing. Water had filled it and flowed out of the top. That was the source of "36 inches of rainfall" except it should have been reported as a minimum of 36 inches overnight. That hillsides liquified and rushed downhill.

Some of us who saw the landslide patterns had camped the previous year in a valley which we revisited. All the boulders had been moved and the campground just wasn't there anymore.


LINK /