Flooding in the Northeast After Days of Heavy Rain

Montpelier, Vermont, officials shuttered the downtown until at least midday Tuesday and warned that a neighboring dam was nearing capacity.

Latest data on floods in Vermont and New York.

After days of torrential rain caused significant flooding across western New England and parts of New York, rivers in Vermont hit some of their highest levels on record overnight into Tuesday morning. The slow-moving storm system was projected to finish its downpour in the United States by Tuesday morning, bringing floods to Quebec.

At least one person was killed in floods in New York State, while hundreds more were rescued across the state and in Vermont. Communities were dealing with road, bridge, rail, and private property damage. President Biden announced a state of emergency in Vermont early Tuesday, releasing government resources to aid in disaster recovery operations.

A portion of Quebec, including Quebec City, is under flood warnings as the storm system moves slowly across Canada. Rain will fall all day Wednesday before stopping.

This morning, rain continues to fall in some of New England’s most severely affected regions. These, however, ought to lessen by this afternoon.

In the coming days, sporadic showers resembling summer are likely. The region’s return to widespread showers on Thursday into Friday, however, is the real worry.

In the early hours of Tuesday, President Biden issued a state of emergency for Vermont, directing the federal government to provide aid in fighting flooding caused by record-breaking river rises there the previous night. According to the White House, the decision will give the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security permission to coordinate disaster relief efforts and offer urgent aid in all 14 counties in the state.

As of 6 am.
According to the National Weather Service, several rivers in Vermont were at or above flood stage in the eastern part of the state. Here are some of the most recent readings for areas that have experienced significant or moderate flooding.

Winooski River in Montpelier is 20 point 41 feet.

Center Rutland’s Otter Creek is 15 points 82 feet away.

Johnson’s Lamoille River measures 20.53 feet.

North Troy’s Missiquoi River measures 12 points 89 feet.

Essex Junction’s Winooski River is 17 points 23 feet deep.

City officials in Montpelier, Vermont, were notified overnight. , in order to assess safety risks, ordered the downtown closed until at least noon on Tuesday. The state capital is traversed by the Winooski River, whose levels exceeded those during Tropical Storm Irene.

According to the National Weather Service, the river crested at its second-highest level on record. The flooding in 1927, the highest on record, is regarded as Vermont’s “greatest natural disaster.”. ”.

A woman died while saving her father’s dog

According to Frank Basile, the chief of police of the Town of Highlands Police Department, Pamela Nugent, a 43-year-old resident of Orange County, perished in the Sunday flash floods in New York while saving her father’s dog.

Ms. The Fort Montgomery resident Nugent, was from Highland Falls, NY.
, and her fiancee saved her 73-year-old father Edward Nugent from his flooded home and transported him to their nearby residence. She attempted to save her father’s dog, but as they crossed the street in the flood, both she and the dog were lost.

Quebec is experiencing flash floods as rain fights wildfires across Canada.

The intense wildfires that had been engulfed in thick smoke in New York and other parts of the United States have received some relief from recent rainfall in Quebec, but torrential downpours are now posing a flash flood risk in the province’s southern regions.

According to the Canadian Meteorological Service, the total amount of precipitation in some Quebec locales, including Quebec City and the communities along the St. By the end of Tuesday, the south shore of the Lawrence River may have risen up to five inches.

According to Simon Legault, a meteorologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, an agency of the federal government, warm, humid airflow from the Gulf of Mexico and the United States is moving north and bringing moisture into Canada.

On Wednesday, the province will experience a break from the rain, but another weather system will bring more showers in the days that follow, he predicted, expressing concern that some areas may experience flooding due to oversaturated soil.

In what is the worst fire season on record for Canada, there are currently 862 wildfires burning across the country, with more than half of them being deemed out of control. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center’s data indicates that 22.9 million acres of land have burned so far, mostly in Quebec, Alberta, and British Columbia.

Although the number of wildfires has generally remained the same or increased, Stéphane Caron, a spokesman for SOPFEU, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing wildfires in Quebec, said that some of the larger fires’ intensity was reduced and that the rain also helped to thin out the smoke.

According to Mr. Caron, the increased visibility also allowed firefighters to use water bombers, which are aircraft that land on lake surfaces to collect water. He continued by saying that more than 1,000 firefighters from various countries, including crews from the US, France, South Korea, the Canadian army, and other provinces, helped put out the fires.

When the water rushed in, how one town jumped into action.

On a Sunday afternoon, three friends and a 5-year-old girl had just finished rolling up an old rug and unrolling a new one when the storm outside changed from a heavy downpour to something else.

In her ten years in Highland Falls, Katharine Dagaev, 62, had experienced heavy rain and observed the brook outside her window creep up numerous times, but never to this height and still rising.

The flooding in Vermont shows how climatic shocks are spreading more widely.

Vermont might seem like an unlikely location for catastrophic flooding given that it lacks any ocean shores or particularly sizable rivers. But the current flood the state is experiencing highlights a major problem with climate change: as temperatures rise, the air can hold more moisture, which can lead to more intense rainfall, worsening flooding in areas that aren’t close to large bodies of water.

These areas are less likely to have the infrastructure necessary to prevent flood damage, such as large storm drains and pumps or levees tall enough to protect towns from advancing creeks and rivers. The main floors of buildings are not likely to need to be elevated by several feet above the expected flood levels either, according to their building codes.

Flooding in the Northeast After Days of Heavy Rain