Vermont Flood Waning. Does Another One Loom?

In this photo from VTrans, water from the White River beginning to
overtake Route 107 in Stockbridge on Monday. 

It has definitely stopped raining in Vermont and the rivers are receding after yesterday's floods. 

There's a couple videos at the bottom of this post showing the Vermont flooding.

It was nothing at all like the flood disaster in Nebraska earlier this spring, but the Vermont water was certainly high.

There were still some flood warnings out there this morning, including along the Winooski and upper Connecticut River and the Otter Creek in Center Rutland.

While the Connecticut River crest will continue downstream from the Northeast Kingdom, the other two rivers are receding and should fall below flood stage later today. Clearing skies, gusty winds and dry air today should help with the drying process. It's also too cold today for much of the remaining snow in the mountains to melt, so we don't have to worry about that runoff.

Luckily, this flood stopped short of damaging many houses. There were a handful of evacuations, and I know some basements in parts of central and southern Vermont were flooded. Most of the problems came along roads.

I was impressed by how many major state highways were closed by high water yesterday - probably at least a dozen.

Back roads took a hit. It's mud season, so dirt roads were soft and squishy and the soil was easily moved. Most heavy storms in April feature a steady soaking rain. This one included torrential downpours in thunderstorms in the southern half of Vermont, so many rural roads were washed out and closed. Quite the mess, I must say.

One person had to be rescued from a parking lot at the Killington Ski Resort. The resort is still open, and skiers sometimes sleep in their cars to save money during local skiing and riding exursions. While Anthony Szeliga, 23, of Niagara Falls, New York slept in the only car in the lot, waters rose overnight, trapping him in his SUV, according to the Rutland Herald.

Szeliga was rescued, uninjured and taken to a local hotel, the Herald reported. 

Northwestern Vermont, where I live, lucked out.  A lot of us had only roughly half an inch of rain, and it really caused no problems. Everything is high and dry today around my house in St. Albans.

Looking ahead, though, there might be more trouble. Wednesday will be dry and sunny, with normal temperatures in the 50s - no problems there.

There might be a little rain Thursday and Friday, and temperatures will rise sharply by Friday, so runoff from mountain snowmelt will pick up.

Then there is an interesting looking storm on Saturday. It's too soon to tell whether Vermont will be targeted by the storm's heavy rain or will the downpours go by to our west or east?

The storm looks like it's going to grab a plume of deep, rich moisture from the Atlantic Ocean and push it northward somewhere along the East Coast on Saturday. But the fine details aren't there yet.

It looks like we in Vermont would be on the warm side of the storm. If that comes to pass, we'd be at risk of thunderstorms with heavy downpours once again. Sharp rains like that would cause more back road and driveway washouts and such. So stay tuned.

Lake Champlain this morning was closing in on flood stage. It was 99 feet above sea level this morning and rising. Flood stage is 100 feet.  There's only minor flooding at 100 feet, but if it gets to 101 feet, you run the risk of shoreline damage, especially if strong wind whip up big, battering waves.

We'll have to keep an eye out on the lake over the next couple of weeks to see what it does.

Some video:

Scenes of flooding from various parts of central Vermont:



The Vermont Department of Agriculture took a drone over the flooding Winooski and Mad rivers in central Vermont Monday. As you can see, there was a lot of lowland flooding but the houses all looked safe. This flooding hit early enough in the season so that the agricultural fields you see under water should be fine when planting season hits: