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| An iconic, old Vermont house destroyed by Tropicql Storm Irene in 2011. |
I'm interested to see what people will think of my ranking. My list is surely colored by personal experience, where I was living in that decade in northwestern Vermont, and what made an impression on me.
So, here are my nominees and what happened during those rather momentous wather events.
1. Tropical Storm Irene Flood Disaster, August 28-29, 2011
Hurricane Irene, not the worst hurricane ever as it came ashore at Cape Lookout, North Carolina with top winds of 85 mph.
But as it made its way northward the next day, with its huge slug of wet air into New England, it unleashed torrential downpours on an already sodden Vermont, unleashing the state's worst weather disaster since the Great Flood of 1927.
In a few places, it was as bad or worse than 1927. For instance, my late father who was still around in 2011 an a lifelong resident of West Rutland, said Irene's flood crest was a little lower in town than in 1927, but the Otter Creek in nearby Center Rutland was higher than in 1927.
By the time in reached Vermont and New Hampshire, Irene was "downgraded" to a tropical storm. However, tropical systems moving inland often create serious floods. That was the case here.
Irene killed six Vermonters, which is terrible, of course. Yet in these times, weather warnings from the National Weather Service and elsewhere are terrific. This storm was warned well in advance, with strongly worded statements from the NWS. Which left us a silver lining: People got out of the way, and the death toll was so much less than the 84 deaths in Vermont the 1927 caused.
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| Farmstand owners and workers and volunteers frantically try to save pumpkins and other merchanes amid rapidlyu rising Mad River waters in Waitsfield, Vermont during Tropical Storm Irene, Auguist 28, 2011. |
More than 2,000 municipal road segments were damaged, as were 280 town bridges and 960 culverts. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, thirteen towns were without passable roads leading in and out of town.
The resilience of Vermonters shined bright during and immediately after the disaster. Volunteers arrived in droves to the hardest hit towns and mucked out muddy basements, cleaned houses, cleared debris, and offered food, money, supplies and moral support in droves.
By the time Vermont's all important fall foliage season arrived about six weeks after Irene, most roads were open, and much of the state looked like it was back to its old self, even as flood victims quietly continued trying to pick up the pieces.
One terrific example of this came on the Rachel Maddow show just under three weeks after Irene. She showed what wiped-out Route 4 in Mendon looked like the immediate aftermath of Irene, and what a marvelous job construction crews did rebuilding it in less than three weeks.
2. Spring Flooding April-June, 2011
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| Lamoille River floodwaters cascade through trees near Fairfax, Vermont during severe flooding in April, 2011. |
A record large snowstorm in early March didn't help. Water content in the snow was exceptionally high.
Minor flooding began in late March, and waxed and waned throughout the spring. On Vermont rivers, the worst flooding came on April 26-27 and on May 26 and 27. Meanwhile, through all this, Lake Champlain reached record, destructive flood levels. More on that in a minute.
The first high flood, on April 26-27, was part of the same storm system that caused arguably the nation's worst tornado outbreak on record in the southeastern third of the nation.
Here, unseasonable waves of thunderstorms, some borderline severe, dumped heavy rain atop of snow that was still deep in the higher elevations. The melting was fast because of mild temperatures in the 50s and 60s. By early morning on April 27, the Lamoille River reached its fourth highest level on record, causing damaging floods along the river from above Johnson down through Milton.
The second wave of flooding struck as part of a severe weather outbreak on May 26-27. The National Weather Service in South Burlington described the storms as a parade of mini-super cells that trecked across northern New York and through central and northern Vermont.
The storms prompted some tornado warnings in central Vermont, but none were known to have touched down. Baseball sized hail was reported at Duxbury,
Overnight on the 26th, the storms jelled into a train of storms that dumped up to seven inches of rain on central Vermont. This led to serious flooding, especially in the Winooski River Valley from Plainfield all the way to Lake Champlain. Barre and Montpelier were especially hard hit, with numerous buildings damaged and roads wiped out.
Five to seven inches of rain fell on saturated soil in a band from around Barre to near St. Johnsbury, causing the extensive floods.
The series of floods inland over Vermont and New York during the spring of 2011 caused easily the worst flood on record for Lake Champlain.
At Burlington, Lake Champlain reached a record crest of 103.2 feet on May 6, 2011 easily exceeding the previous record of 102.1 feet in 1869.
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| Camps destroyed by record Lake Champain flooding in May, 2011. |
An estimated 500 Vermont homes were severely damaged by the flooding. Extensive damage was reported in New York and especially southern Quebec.
In Quebec, the Richelieu River is the main outlet for Lake Champlain. With the lake at record high levels, that river inevitably reached record high levels, too, flooding hundreds of homes.
Lake Champlain is a pretty big lake, so strong winds can stir up some big waves. Much of the destruction was caused by large, battering waves striking the shore.
The spring flooding helped set the stage for Irene a few months later. The soil was still very soggy by June, and continued rains during the summer kept it that way. Then Irene's rains came.
Flood, Wind Storm October 31-November 1, 2019
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| Winooski River in Winooski, Vermont in high flood, November 1, 2019. |
This was probably Vermont's most destructive storm since Tropical Storm Irene. After a very rainy October that saturated soils, a strong storm passed northeastward across the eastern Great Lakes into Quebec.
This put Vermont into the warm side of the storm, the side in which deep tropical moisture rode northward from the Gulf of Mexico.
On Halloween night, the storm dumped three to five inches of rain across the northern half of Vermont in just a few hours, creating flash floods that damaged or destroyed dozens of culverts and road segments. Many homes were damaged as well.
In Burlington, 3.30 inches of rain fell as temperatures reached a record high of 71 degrees late in the evening of October 31. Streets flooded, stalling cars. A landslide off Riverside Avenue nearly took a couple buildings with it.
Sections of two rivers in northern Vermont - the Lamoille and Missisquoi - reached record crests, flooding more buildings.
Behind the storm on November 1, strong west winds gusting as high as 65 mph cut power to????? homes and caused damaged to roofs, other structures and trees.
3. March, 2017 Pi Day Storm
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| Stuck cars amid near zero visibility during the Pi Day blizzard of March 14, 2017. |
An easy contender for one of the most intense snowstorms in Vermont history hit on March 14, 2017.
The so-called Pi Day Storm (because it hit on Pi (3.14) dumped more than 30 inches of snow in parts of northwestern Vermont and New York.
Burlington's snow total reached 30.4 inches, which is the second deepest snowstorm on record and easily the biggest March snowstorm on record for the Queen City.
During the afternoon of March 14, snow fell at the rate of up to five inches per hour. A foot of snow fell in Burlington in just over four hours. People who were foolhardy enough to go to work that morning pretty much could not drive home that late afternoon.
Thankfully, the storm was well-forecast by the National Weather Service, so most people had hunkered down at home to wait the storm out.
Also, the snow was relatively dry and powdery, so there were no issues with power lines and trees.
Even so, the western half of the state basically shut down during the blizzard.
4. May 2013 Flood and Snow, With More flooding June, July 2013
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| If you look carefully you can see a swimming pool beneath muddy flash flood water on July 4, 2013. This storm was toward the end of a nearly two-month siege of heavy rain and flooding in Vermont. |
The result was repeated flash floods and incredibly wet soil conditions that took a toll on farming throughout the state.
The rains came around the third week in May. Burlington received a whopping 7.47 inches of rain in the six days ending May 26. That's twice the normal amount for the entire month. Rainfall of that intensity was common in the northern half of the state during this period.
On May 21 through 23, the heavy rain came in the form of thunderstorms, some of which formed into a train of repeated storms over north-central Vermont.
The result was a swath of flash flood damage in northwestern Vermont, especially around Underhill and Cambridge.
On May 25, unusually cold air swept in and changed rain to snow at mid and high elevations, leading to some incredible snow totals for so late in the season. It was Memorial Day weekend, after all.
The summit of Whiteface Mountain, New York was buried beneath 30 inches of snow. In Vermont, Jay Peak had 18 inches, and the summit of Mount Mansfield had 13.2 inches. At lower elevations in Vermont, Walden reported six inches, Greensboro, 4.5 inches, Topsham, 3.5 inches and Troy, two inches.
Repeated flash flooding continued through June and into early July. The floods would hit individual towns here and there through the period as the rest of the state endured continued soggy conditions.
In late June, a torrential thunderstorm flooded a several mile stretch of southbound Interstate 89 in Williston and Richmond and caused other property damage in northwestern Vermont.
Huntington was hit hard on July 3 On July 4, more flash flooding caused additional extensive damage, especially to local roads in an area centered around Jericho, Underhill and Richmond.
Total rainfall in June at Burlington amounted to 9.86 inches, which was just 0.06 inches shy of the wettest June on record. Essex Junction reporte 10.48 inches for the month.
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| Flooding in Burlington, Vermont after a very severe thunderstorm on July 4, 2012. |
A third storm, a supercell, caused damage in northwestern New York that afternoon.
In Vermont, the first storm complex of the day formed near the Quebec border just north of Jay Peak and moved into the Northeast Kingdom during the mid-afternoon.
Strong straight line winds caused lots of tree damage throughout much of that area. Winds gusted to 70 mph in Walden.
The second, more serious storm complex formed southwest of Montreal and traveled southwestward down the Champlain Valley. The storms arrived just before planned fireworks festivities and other events, sending people scrambling for cover. Luckily, storm warnings were both timely and strongly worded, so no serious injuries were reported.
The storms did pack probably the strongest punch for a storm since the extreme severe storm outbreak and Colchester EF-2 tornado of 1983. Winds hit 75 mph at Diamond Island, 70 mph in Colchester and 63 mph in Burlington.
There was widespread tree and power line damage. The storm produced intense rains. That caused flash flooding that damaged several buildings in and near downtown Burlington and stranded some cars. Nearly 1.4 inches of rain fell in Burlington in less than an hour.
6. December, 2014 Snow
A very wet, heavy and deep snowstorm struck Vermont in mid-December dumped six to 20 inches of snow that was basically the consistency of wet cement. Damage was especially heavy in parts of Rutland County and the Champlain Valley.
The storm was considered by some the most destructive to Vermont's power lines since either Tropical Storm Irene or the Great Ice Storm of 1998.
7. Southwest Vermont Supercell, May, 2014
This is likely one of the most damaging single thunderstorm on record in Vermont (Outbreaks of many thunderstorms on the same day across Vermont were likely costlier).
The supercell thunderstorm developed in the southeastern Adirondacks around 2:30 p.m and barreled southeastward across Addison and Rutland counties before weakening in southeastern Vermont tha evening.
The storm produced a roughly three to four mile wide, 40 to 50 mile long stripe of hail and wind damage, with wind gusts to 74 mph near Bridport and very damaging hail, some golf ball sized or larger, especially in and around Rutland and Proctor.
Vermont was affecting in what was very likely the nation's biggest March heat wave. The record heat extended from the northern Plains to the East Coast and on up into southeastern Canada.
Temperatures were as high as 84 in Montpelier, which tied the statewide record high for the month of March. It was 83 in Springfield and Union Village Dam. It wss 81 degrees up in the Northeast Kingdom in St. Johnsbury
Burlington had daily highs of 76. 79.80,81 and 81 on March 18-22. The month was a whopping 12.6 degrees above normal.
9. Hot February, 2017
Unprecedented springlike heat reached Vermont in late February, 2017 establishing some incredible new monthly records. On February 25, Burlington reached 72 degrees, beating the monthly record by a full nine degrees. (That record had been set just two days earlier.). The 72 in both Burlington and Bennington established a new statewide record high for February.
10. Cold February, 2015
Winters have trended mild most of the time in Vermont over the past decade. However, a big exception was February, 2015.
Burlington ended the month 13.9 degrees colder than normal, enough to be the ?/coldest February on record. Sixteen of the 28 days were below zero.
Also Rans
There are other contenders for the top 10 weather events of the decade. Some that come to mind are the record hot summer of 2018, that killed six Vermonters. That's the one that maybe really should have been on the list.
Other biggies are the March 6-7 storm of 2011, which I briefly mentioned. It caused some flooding with heavy rain, which turned to heavy snow to the tune of two feet in northern Vermont.
Others include a severe storm outbreak in May, 2012 which included one tornado; dense smoke in Vermont on May 31, 2010 due to Quebec wildfires; Burlington's deepest single snowstorm, 33.1 inches as the decade opened on Jan 2-3, 2010; destructive ice jams and flooding, in January, 2018; severe thunderstorms and wind damage on July 8, 2014; and the supercells in northwestern Vermont and severe thunderstorms elsewhere on May 4, 2018.
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