Irene and Vermont

[Erik Rutins]

FYI, we evacuated our Vermont office earlier today as the local stream had turned into a raging river and was flooding the town. Many friends and my parents also evacuated, flooding is pretty widespread. The wind took down some trees and power lines, but the flooding is incredible, once in 50-100 year levels.

http://www.weather.com/weather/hurrican ... tools_face

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pictures- ... 2424195960

http://ireport.cnn.com/open-story.jspa? ... DOC-663819

Regards,

- Erik

[junk2drive]

Stay safe. Prayers and best wishes your way.

[rhondabrwn]

Glad you are safe and I hope your office is unharmed when you return! Flooding is scary business [:(]

[Hanal]

Here in New Jersey we had quite a bit of flooding...I shudder to think what would have happened if we received the full wrath of what was anticipated!

[sabre1]

Sorry to hear Erik. I hope and pray for your family and others who are suffering right now.

[wworld7]

MY prayers are with you also.

As was mentioned, NJ also had some rough parts with flooding. But nothing like I've seen on TV up north.

Anyway, I am happy to be in NJ for a few weeks, as Connecticut was also hit hard.

[Alan Sharif]

Hope all is ok and you are all safe.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi everyone,

The flood waters are decreasing, but Vermont was among the states hit pretty hard.

The office survived and we are moved back in, but one of our staff had their house flooded, another nearly so. We have some major roads still impassable due to flood waters or with sections just washed away that will need rebuilding. I hope everyone else that was in the path of Irene among our community is ok.

Regards,

- Erik

[DuckofTindalos]

Looks like a quotation from the movies is appropriate:

"Mother-****ing Irene!"

[tevans6220]

Glad you're okay Erik. I live in SE Pennsylvania and I've spent the whole day pumping a foot of water out of my basement. We got hit pretty hard in this area but luckily all my family suffered was a power outage and a flooded basement. We got lucky. It's bad but others have it worse. Take care.

[Knavery]

It's insane to see how much damage Irene has caused. What a bitch. This was knocked down to a category 1 or tropical storm when it hit right? Despite the damage it caused, I'm glad it wasn't anything bigger. Best wishes to everyone on the East Coast who was effected.

[rhondabrwn]

I've got a desktop weather satellite service that gives me a constantly updated cloud view. I'm currently centered on the Virgin Islands and watching two more storms out in the Atlantic heading our way. I'm afraid we're in for a rough hurricane season and Irene was just the beginning.

Makes you glad to be living in the high desert.

[benpark]

I hope everyone is safe, and that the damage is limited (or none). I grew up in NH (and lived in VT for a few years), and it's extremely depressing to see the flooding, damage and covered bridges being swept away. The best country and people in the world up there in the Northland. My best wishes to you up there.

[htuna]

Weird.. we hardly got any rain (Eastern Side of Mass).. but so many multi day power outages, I've never seen anything like it.. more than half of any people you asked at work, had no power two days later...

Glad to hear your ok..

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Hi everyone,

The flood waters are decreasing, but Vermont was among the states hit pretty hard ...

I can't understand how Irene could cause so much damage that far north when it was already down-graded to a tropical storm after it hit here in Connecticut.

I thought the storm was so large that it would collapse the farther it moved inland and ran out of steam.

Any meterologists out there with an explanation?

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: Joe D.
I can't understand how Irene could cause so much damage that far north when it was already down-graded to a tropical storm after it hit here in Connecticut.

Geography of Vermont and water having the tendency to run down from the hills to the valleys

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[Igard]

Sounds like it was really nasty. Hope those who were affected are back to normal soon and with as little fuss as possible.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Joe D.
I can't understand how Irene could cause so much damage that far north when it was already down-graded to a tropical storm after it hit here in Connecticut.

I thought the storm was so large that it would collapse the farther it moved inland and ran out of steam.

Any meterologists out there with an explanation?

It surprised us too. The basic explanation is that the higher you were in altitude, the more rain you got from Irene. Here in Vermont, Irene dropped 5-8 inches of rain in the valleys but 10-14 inches on the mountains and all that water flowed down into the valleys in a relatively short period of time. As a result, Irene created conditions equivalent to the "Great Flood" of 1927 that I had heard about but did not expect to see repeated any time soon.

I've spent a few days this week doing flood recovery work at my parents' house and there's a lot more to do. Unfortunately, a lot of family photos, movies and memorabilia, in some cases dating back to the 19th Century were lost or damaged. We're pretty bummed about that but still consider ourselves lucky compared to many others who lost much more to Irene.

Regards,

- Erik

[decaro]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

... Unfortunately, a lot of family photos, movies and memorabilia, in some cases dating back to the 19th Century were lost or damaged. We're pretty bummed about that but still consider ourselves lucky compared to many others who lost much more to Irene.

In addition to the rest of your tribulations, I'm very sorry to hear about all those photos; we recently discovered many such pics when my aunt died, so my sister had them all scanned for both distribution and preservation, just in case.

I wonder if Irene broke-up over the hills of Vermont and just dropped everything she had left on you?
Supposedly the storm was on its way to Canada.