As The Valley Reporter goes to press on July 10, it has begun raining and predictions are for a lot of rain, a hell of a lot of rain or just enough rain to make us nervous.
After marauding in the Caribbean, wreaking havoc on Cariacou, Union Island, Petit Martinique, Jamaica and beyond, Hurricane Beryl came ashore in Mexico and Texas and has now worked her way northeast.
Oddly enough Beryl’s visitation takes a place a year to the date after devastating flooding hit Vermont. Repair work after the flood is still underway with some mobile home parks closed and residents displaced, some infrastructure damaged and not repaired, some businesses closed and others still struggling.
After the July flooding, Vermont was hit with more – and just as intense -- flooding in December. That makes for two 100-year (or 500-year) floods in six months and we just can’t fathom or stomach the possibility of another 100- or 500- year flood. We’re not ready physically or emotionally.
Vermont is often touted as a place that will attract climate refugees, seeking to escape the worst impacts of climate change such as wildfires, tornados, and extreme storms. We’re lucky in some respects AND flooding is our new normal.
Locally, and as a state, we’re working hard on flood resilience and making progress as much by intention as by default due to the repeated flood events which require building back better, differently or elsewhere altogether. We have the tools and we’re developing more tools to prevent and slow flood waters and we’re deploying them, but can we accomplish things fast enough to get ahead of climate change?
But that doesn’t make it any easier to be waiting – listening to the rain and thunder, checking the U.S.G.S. gage on the Mad River in Moretown, checking the Winooski gage, worrying about Moretown and Waterbury and all of our neighbors.
(Google USGS stream gage Moretown, VT 04288000 and then select ‘legacy’ site. The river height and cubic feet per second of flow are updated at the top of the hour.)
So, we wait, we watch the forecast, we hope history doesn’t repeat itself and we hope we’re worrying needlessly and we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
