Orrock said the lead time for Monday's warnings averaged out to about 25 minutes, and he credited wireless emergency alerts on smartphones and continuous storm coverage on local television for quickly getting the word out to the public.

On top of the local severe weather, the Wakefield office has taken over some duties for the neighboring office that serves eastern North Carolina. Hurricane Florence disabled some of the communications at the Morehead City office last weekend, then the staff there needed time to regroup and check on their homes in the wake of the storm.

During that disruption, the warnings that went out for the major river flooding in parts of coastal North Carolina actually originated from the safety of Sussex County.

Three forecasters were dispatched to Wakefield from the Northeast U.S. to help with the additional workload.

Orrock expects that operations will get back to normal later this week.

Morehead City would be the primary backup site for Wakefield in the event of catastrophic weather or outages in southeastern Virginia.

Rainfall and James River update