From Huntington Hall to Cape Charles: Barracks, a Bolide, and a Nor'easter

Description

This week on Tidewater Talk, the rain finally shows up and we have plenty to talk about while it does. The Navy is handing every junior sailor barracks in Hampton Roads to a private company in a $1.7 billion deal, including a new 17 story tower in Newport News where Huntington Hall stands today, and Brodie has some opinions about that building. VDOT breaks ground on the Norfolk segment of the Hampton Roads Express Lanes, seven more miles of I-64 and 21 bridges, so we get into whether express lanes actually work. There is also an algae bloom called the mahogany tide moving through the lower Chesapeake, and yes, somebody named it Marge.

Strange and Odd goes way down this week, to the 35 million year old asteroid crater buried under the lower Bay near Cape Charles, and the ancient brine that makes deep wells in Newport News and Poquoson unusable.

Co has the forecast, and it is a busy one: a coastal flood warning, wind gusts up to 50, and eight to 12 foot surf before things calm down for a cooler weekend.

We reveal the Where in Tidewater answer (the concrete ships at Kiptopeke) and give you three new clues for a place in Virginia Beach you can climb. Send your guess to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Plus your weekend: the 52nd Neptune Festival, Ghent Restaurant Week, Farm Aid at the amphitheater, and Pirate Night at VA Vintage.

If you're in Coastal Virginia, this is your weekly mix of news, local lore, weather, and where to go next.

Where in Tidewater

This week's spot is something you can climb.
It is older than the White House. It was the very first construction project the brand-new federal government ever authorized, back in George Washington's first term. It is built from the same kind of Virginia sandstone you see all over Washington, D.C. And it has not done its original job in well over a century.
It is in Virginia Beach, on a Navy base, a short walk from where the English colonists first landed in 1607. And it has a younger sibling right next door, a black-and-white tower built in 1881 that is still working today. You cannot climb the new one. You can climb this one.

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