Sunday's Vermont Flash Floods Repeat A Disturbing, Worsening Pattern

A big gush of rain over Lake Champlain last summer.
Climate change is helping to make summer downpours
heavier. Local flash floods, like what happened Sunday
in central Vermont, are unfortunately getting more common

The flash flooding that hit parts of north-central Vermont last Sunday certainly weren't as bad as last summer's catastrophic summer flooding, but it still stung, big time. 

Especially since it keeps happening over and over again.

It seems like mountain towns barely clean up from the washed out roads, slopes and culverts from flash floods when the next one hits. 

Climate change has increased the likelihood that our normal summer cloudbursts become not so normal, and instead, especially have and destructive. 

 "It's a bit scary at this point how often we have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again," Stowe Director of Public Works told WPTZ. "I've been Stowe's public works director for 14 years, and this is the seventh event that would exceed a 100-year storm." 

Sunday's storm dumped at least two inches of rain on Stowe in just 30 minutes. There's no way you can contain the runoff from that, especially considering there had been downpours earlier in the afternoon. 

There was a report that the rainfall rate in Jericho during one storm reached 6.25 inches per hour. Obviously, that was just a few minutes of the storm and the town didn't actually accumulate that much rain. 

 The flooding Sunday was not limited to Stowe.  Video on Facebook showed a raging brook overwhelming a road in Worcester. Several roads in that town had to be closed because of flood damage.

Last summer's catastrophic floods understandably captured most of the attention, but its these local floods that hit Stowe, Worcester and Elmore Sunday that will be the most common in our climate changed, wetter world. 

Vermont's geography makes the region prone to flash floods. If torrential rains hits a mountainous area, the water rushes down the steep slopes, and often carries mud, rocks and branches with it. Just a couple inches of rain in an hour can unleash some real damage. 

The distressing thing is the flash floods are happening frequently enough now, you never know which of our many summer downpours will turn destructive. I'm sure public works crews and many others in Vermont brace themselves when they hear of a heavy rain risk. 

There's always close misses, too.  Flash flooding was reported in southern New England last night from a storm whose punch luckily passed south of Vermont. There's also a very low, but not zero chance of flash flooding in Vermont Saturday night. (Though so far I'm not especially worried about that one, stay tuned).

Like many other places around the nation and world, Vermont is trying to build resilience to these repeated disasters with bigger, stronger culverts and such. But as Sunday's storm in Stowe demonstrates, there's only so much you can do.

Expect many more rounds of flash flood damage in Vermont in the coming years, especially in the summers.