In late April a tornado passed through North Carolina and Virginia and I worried about students and faculty members. While I was in Florida, rain and the last of the snow melt made Lake Champlain overflow, flooding the Burlington waterfront and many lakeside homes, including the summer home of some friends, who have never had water in that camp in the 50 years the house has stood. Then the Mississippi and its tributaries began to flood. Then there was the Tuscaloosa tornado. Then the Joplin tornado. Then the Oklahoma City tornado, and one of my co-workers lives there - we got an email at 5am the next day saying he and his wife were OK.
Take a look at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/ssd/mapping/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornadoes_of_2011 and be amazed.
The recent weather events have made a lot of people jumpy. So it did not help when yesterday (Thursday) at noon the National Weather Service (NWS) in Burlington issued a tornado warning for the entire northern half of the state.
I can see most of the weather heading my way when I'm home. I left work early so I could finish mowing the lawn before the rain hit, and then I did some gardening, all the while watching the clouds form over the mountains, and the skies get darker, and the rain as it came out of the clouds many miles away.
At 6pm I went into the house to get something, and heard a NWS tornado warning. Before I got out the door I heard another one. I really hustled to get everything put away. I ran two 5-gallon buckets of water. I parked the car very close to the house (don't ask why, I just do this). Ernie was even prudent enough to come in the first time I called him.
I have never EVER heard NWS warnings like I did yesterday. There was a warning every one or two minutes, precisely describing the storm features (tornado! straight-line winds! hail! torrential rain!, etc) and naming the communities in danger (Brookfield was never named, but Northfield - where I work - was). These minute-by-minute warnings went on for about an hour and a half. The lightning up toward Northfield was intense - big heavy lightning streaks, not delicate spidery things. The weather that came over my house was a loud, hour-long thunderstorm - big, but still a summer storm. Thank heaven. The radio began to broadcast reports of flooding in Barre and Montpelier.
This morning I learned what really happened. The thunderstorm that spent a hour over my house was one of a line that rained for 5 hours, and dumped 6" of water in many towns north of me. Roads large and small are closed or washed out. The Winooksi River went out of its banks as the flooded tributaries drained into it, and the downtowns of Montpelier, Barre and Waterbury were under several feet of water by midnight. The Dog River flooded Route 12, cutting off the local route from Northfield to Montpelier. It also went out of its banks in Northfield and threatened Mayo Nursing Home, which is near my office. The Mayo staff and the Norwich facilities crew evacuated all the residents to the new (air-conditioned) dorm on the campus, well above the river, sometime in the dead of night. This morning Northfield had no land-line phone service (although most Internet connections worked) but many parts of Berlin (near Montpelier) had no phones and no Internet either. The State says that the Winooski and the Stevens Branch (in Barre) had water levels almost matching the Great Flood of 1927. This is runoff, so water levels will lower quickly, if there's no more rain. But all this water is heading for the lake, which has been above flood stage for four weeks.
Closer to home, we have to take the long way to Randolph again. Update: I put West Street pictures on Facebook. At the bottom of West Street, the big culvert got blocked as it did in 2007, the water went over the road, washed out the bank beneath the road (and that part of the road), and as in 2007 ran across the Ilsley's hayfield down to the foot of Bear Hill Road. There the water met the big brook at the bottom, which went out of its banks and damaged the very same houses that it damaged in 2007. Ayers Brook, which caused so much damage in 2007, is set to do it again if the storms tonight are as predicted. A house on Route 12 which had a small drainage brook running behind the barn now has a new brook running within a few feet of the back of the house, in a chasm three feet wide and three feet deep.
I called my friends George and Gail to see if I could help them at their flower farm, much of which is covered today by the Winooski River. I can't get there. The part of Route 2 I'd have to drive is covered with water for a mile.
This is a two-day post. I lost the Internet connection last night before I could publish with yesterday's pictures. Now it's 7 pm Friday and after a hot, sunny day the thunderstorms have started again. The NWS said this would happen, and they're right. The flash flood warnings are up, there's thunder and crackling lighting, and it's a goose-drowner of a storm. Right now, Brookfield and Randolph residents have some damage, but are basically inconvenienced, and very lucky.
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