Vermont and the next massive flood
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In Windham, Vermont, a log house with a pitched roof stands on a street turned into a river by record rainfall.
Twenty miles away in Bridgewater, a man wades in waist-deep water and searches for his belongings. In Montpellier, the state capital, rescuers in life jackets navigate inflatable rescue rafts, while in Berlin a helicopter crew extracts three people and a cat. Three days after a storm dumped nine inches of rain in Vermont—more than double the average July rate of rain—parts of the state are still flooding, and it’s raining more and more. The flood is eerily similar to Hurricane Irene that hit the state in 2011, killing eight people, destroying homes and smashing a number of bridges to their foundations.
Since then, the state has made great strides in preparing for floods, but this week’s rains illustrate the scope of the threat ahead. “It’s been a tough year for Vermont,” says Lauren Oates, director of policy and government relations for The Nature Conservancy Vermont, pointing to the state’s dry spring, persistent drought, and air pollution from the Canadian wildfires and current floods. However, she added, “I can say very clearly that we are much better off [الآن] than we were when Hurricane Irene hit. We have learned a lot as a state and as a group of communities about how to live and work in and near rivers.”
In 2018, then as Vermont’s risk mitigation officer, Oates helped usher in the state’s latest risk mitigation plan, as FEMA requires all states to have such a plan that is updated every five years, to receive a share of federal funding. In addition to an overhaul, the plan focused heavily on helping Vermont manage new risks brought on by climate change, including flooding. Floods have long been the most common natural hazard in Vermont.
This is due in part to the state’s north-south, east-west mountain ridges, whose upwelling effects concentrate rain, says Leslie Ann Daubigny Gero, a Vermont climatologist. “Every time the air is forced to rise, it cools and condenses, causing rain,” she added. Meanwhile, although “Vermont is not coastal, we’re not far from the coast,” says Chris Campani, executive director of the Wyndham Regional Commission, one of 11 that provides technical assistance to municipalities across Vermont.
“Because these weather systems pump moisture into the Atlantic Ocean, they make storms cause more rain,” he says. Climate change is exacerbating this threat. As the planet warms, nearly 90 percent of that heat is stored in the oceans, according to NASA. A warming ocean leads to more evaporation, which means more moisture in the air, which can lead to more precipitation.
Both the National Climate Assessment and the Vermont Climate Assessment show that the state will face more frequent and more catastrophic flooding due to climate change. The latest report notes that the number of days with more than an inch of rain in Vermont, known as a downpour, has increased by 40% since the end of the 20th century.
And after Hurricane Irene, which caused more than $18 billion in damage across the United States, Vermont stepped up its flood preparations, adopting new road and bridge standards and pushing for federal funding to increase the size of bridges and canals. Campani says clogged ducts were behind many of Vermont’s lost bridges during Hurricane Irene. The state has also begun buying homes in precarious areas and demolishing them to allow for permanent green space. Since 2011, Vermont authorities have purchased nearly 150 homes and businesses. But while Vermont has made great strides in the decade since Hurricane Irene, those efforts pale in comparison to what it will face in the future.
Oates says that roughly 75 percent of the state’s rivers are still separated from their historic floodplains, and when heavy rains occur, those rivers are likely to change their flood path and return to their original floodplains. The 2018 plan, which Oates helped oversee, attempts to encourage local action by linking disaster recovery aid to investment in risk mitigation: the more a city invests, the less it has to contribute to post-disaster recovery efforts.
Kendra Pierre-Louis*
* An American newspaper writer concerned with climate issues
Published by special arrangement with The Washington Post Leasing and Syndication Service.
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