SUTTON, Vt. (AP) — Communities in rural parts of Vermont on Friday woke up once again to damaged homes and washed-out roads due to heavy rainfall and flash flooding, making it the third consecutive summer that severe floods have inundated parts of the state.
Up to 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain fell in just a few hours on Thursday, prompting rapid flooding as local waterways began to swell, said Robert Haynes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington office.
Nearly 20 homes were cut off in the small town of Sutton as a local brook quickly rose from its banks and surrounded buildings, Fire Chief Kyle Seymour said. His crews were called out to help rescue people from two homes, which required help from swift-water rescue teams called in from neighboring communities.
“This was an incredibly strong, quick-moving localized heavy water,” Seymour said. “It overwhelmed all of our road culverts, all of our streams, all of our rivers. But the actual weather event lasted three hours, with the bulk of the rain concentrated within one hour.”
Though the severity of the storms wasn’t as widespread compared to the past two years, local officials were still surveying the extent of the damage Friday morning and shaking their heads that they were dealing with flood recovery for three years in a row.
“When I started seeing the reporters saying it wasn’t going to be that bad, I didn’t believe it,” Seymour said, adding that at least one member of his crew has contemplated retiring after experiencing such repeated flood emergencies.
According to the National Weather Service, Vermont’s experience with floods can be traced to both ongoing climate change and the state’s mountainous geography. Greater rainfall and increased moisture availability have made the state’s steep terrain more susceptible to flooding.
Elsewhere in Vermont, heavy winds blew off a significant portion of a high school’s roof in Addison County.
Meanwhile, flash flooding also occurred in Massachusetts on Thursday after rains dumped more than 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain in some areas. Some businesses were flooded in the town of Weymouth, which saw the bulk of the rain and flooding while commuters faced delays as highways and streets south of Boston flooded.
