Digging Out And Reconnecting After Epic Vermont Windstorm

A blue spruce fell against this house in Milton, Vermont
during the windstorm early Monday

As we struggle to get our electric power back, pick up the mess in our yards, contemplate the fallen trees and blown off roofing shingles, it's turned into a gorgeous late afternoon after the storm, at least in western Vermont.

It's still windy, but the sun has popped back out and the temperatures are still relatively mild for this time of year. A nice interlude to start cleaning up.

Lots of problems remain of course. As of 3:30 p.m. this Monday afternoon, a whopping 64,000 Vermont homes and businesses remain without power. It could take days to restore electricity in some areas.

Workers put tarps on a roof that lost many shingles in the
big windstorm in Milton, Vermont. 

Late this morning, those numbers translated to 150,000 Vermonters without electricity. That's roughly 25 percent of the state's population. At one point 1.4 people in New England had no electricity today.

Although my town, St. Albans, was pretty hard hit, I'm lucky. My power is back on. Most of the few patches of siding that were torn off my house can easily be put back in place. A large branch pierced the roof of my shed, but it looks easily repairable.

And I'll have to spend time picking up the countless branches down on my property. (It looks like I'll have a HUGE winter burn pile.)

Green Mountain Power, Vermont's largest utility, says 350 linemen, tree workers and others have mobilized to fix all these power failures.

Non-functioning traffic lights due to continued power
failures in Colchester, Vermont after the big windstorm

At least here in Vermont, the damage was hit and miss. Most of the strongest winds came from downslope winds off the west sides of mountains, especially the Green Mountains. The cause of this was screaming strong winds, in excess of 100 mph several thousand feet overhead.

In some places, lower level winds going up and over the tops of the mountains were able to "grab" some of the stronger winds aloft and translate them down to the surface, where we live.  That explains the pockets of heavy damage.

In other sections of the state, this "grab" didn't quite happen, so the winds weren't quite as strong in some aresa. Which left us with swaths of heavy damage, with many trees down, roof shingles gone and chaos, and other areas that had a rather stormy night, but nothing super scary.

A tangle of fallen trees in Milton, Vermont Monday after
the severe wind storm earlier in the dauy. 

Unlike most downslope wind events, the strongest winds were felt a several miles west of the Green Mountains, rather than along the immediate slopes.

That's why towns like St. Albans, Milton, Georgia and South Burlington were so badly affected. Towns closer to the Greens in the traditional wind belts also had trouble, too, but they've seen that, done that.

We can count ourselves lucky in Vermont, too, that it wasn't worse. Southern New England was blasted by even stronger winds than Vermont, and more damage, too. Mashpee, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod reported a gust of 93 mph. The wind gusted to 80 mph in Duxbury, Massachusetts.

And in southern New England, up to five inches of rain fell. So flooding accompanied the high winds. There were no reports of serious flooding in Vermont. In the White Mountains region of New Hampshire, rainfall of up to five inches caused damaging flash floods this morning.

My dog Jackson inspects the chaos on our back deck in St.
Albans after the severe windstorm tossed outdoor furniture
all over the place earlier Monday morning. 

Going forward, the weather in Vermont and much of the rest of New England will remain unsettled as we go into November, but that's normal for that time of year.

There's a good chance of showers from Wednesday night through Sunday, and there will be some fairly gusty winds at times, but nothing particularly dangerous.

Some of those rain showers will turn to mountain snow showers at times through the period, but again, that's normal in Vermont for early November.

I guess, then, it is now becoming safe to go out and clean up after one of the worst Vermont windstorms in recent decades.