Remember when Vermont was listed as one of the places to go, to avoid climate change disasters? How things have changed.
The state has been hit by back-to-back-to-back-to-back historic flooding. Tyler Jankoski of the NBC affiliate in Vermont pointed out that in 130 years of record-keeping at St. Johnsbury in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, Tuesday was the wettest ever, and by a staggering margin: 8 inches of rain compared to a previous record of 4.99 inches! The fourth-highest rainfall occurred two weeks earlier.
Why is this happening? Climate change makes the atmosphere hold more moisture is the root cause, but Vermont’s hilly geography channels the water into relatively few places, and its infrastructure is old, compounding damage. AP has the story.
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Another issue about this storm is that it was a thunderstorm that developed under an upper level low pressure system that was stalled over the area. When it started raining, things didn’t move quickly. CoCoRaHS data showed a lot of rain over St Johnsbury, but very little nearby. From news coverage, Lyndonville got clobbered too, it’s about 10 miles north, but CoCoRaHS data doesn’t show much exciting.
This should show the rain around St Johnsbury for the 24 hour period.
https://maps.cocorahs.org/?maptype=precip&units=us&base=std&cp=BluYlwRed&datetype=daily&displayna=0&date=2024-07-30&key=dynamic&overlays=state,county&bbox=-73.00003051757814,43.990838502564706,-70.56930541992189,44.867549659447235