Special Marine Warning Issued for Chesapeake Bay and James River VA
This alert is no longer in effect.
NOAA issued it on June 12, 2026, 2 months ago. Warnings of this kind stay in effect for hours to a few days, so this page is a historical record of what was issued, not a current warning. For conditions where you are right now, check weather.gov (US), weather.gc.ca (Canada), the Met Office (UK), or the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia).
Areazine synthesizes this NWS weather alert directly from NOAA's official public data feed. See our methodology for full source attribution and refresh cadence.
NWS Wakefield VA has issued a Special Marine Warning for multiple Chesapeake Bay and James River zones until 8:00 PM EDT due to a strong thunderstorm producing wind gusts of 34 knots or greater.
Read this weather record in 30 seconds
- Record type
- Special Marine Warning
- Affected area
- Chesapeake Bay and James River, Virginia
- Issued
- June 12, 2026
- Issuing authority
- NWS Wakefield VA
Marine notices apply to named waters or shoreline zones. They may not describe conditions on land, even when the nearest place name is the same.
Record status: historical. It was issued 2 months ago; use the issuing agency's live warning service for current conditions in Chesapeake Bay and James River, Virginia.
Alert Details
A Special Marine Warning (event code MAW) has been issued by the National Weather Service in Wakefield VA. The alert is effective from May 27 at 6:45 PM EDT until May 27 at 8:00 PM EDT.
Affected Areas
The warning covers Chesapeake Bay from New Point Comfort to Little Creek VA; Chesapeake Bay from Little Creek VA to Cape Henry VA including the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel; James River from Jamestown to the James River Bridge; and James River from JRB to HRBT, Including the Elizabeth River.
What You Should Do
Move to safe harbor until hazardous weather passes.
Expected Conditions
At 6:44 PM EDT, a strong thunderstorm was located near Burwell Bay, moving east at 25 knots. Hazard includes wind gusts 34 knots or greater. Small craft could be damaged in briefly higher winds and suddenly higher waves.
Timeline
The alert is in effect from 2026-05-27T18:45:00-04:00 until 2026-05-27T20:00:00-04:00.
Original source: NOAA Official Notice ↗
Related Weather Alerts
All Weather Alerts →Nationwide notices with similar length or severity timing 8
Two Areazine-derived peer sets for this NWS weather alert: nearest notices by body length and by same severity near the same agency date. Peers come from other categories so they are not the same-feed Related list above.
Similar body length
Nearest notices by article body length (934 characters here).
Similar severity timing
Same severity (high) notices issued closest in time to June 12, 2026.
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Common questions about this NWS weather alert.