BREAKING: Major, Life-Threatening Flash Flood Slams Vermont's Northeast Kingdom Overnight

 Severe flash flood, catastrophic in some locations has hit Vermont's Northeast Kingdom overnight and early this morning.  

The National Weather Service in South Burlington declared a rare flash flood emergency and a particularly dangerous situation

This photo posted to Facebook this morning by Daren
Sweatt shows major flood damage near St. Johnsbury
from last night's torrential rains

- the most dire and hair on fire type of warning - for St. Johnsbury and Danville, plus for a second area around Morgan. 

This is a worst case scenario for the these areas. The flash flooding was unexpected and hit during the pre-dawn hours when people were sound asleep and unaware. 

St. Johnsbury was slammed with an incredible eight inches of rain within four hours. That's about the same amount of rain that would normally fall there over the course of two months. 

We're just starting to get reports from the ground of what's going on in the flash flood zone. We know of swift water rescues in St. Johnsbury. 

Ominous photos are starting to pop up on social media. One shows a destroyed home deposited across a road near St. Johnsbury. Another shows a badly battered car submerged in flood waters, with a swift water rescue team nearby.  Other photos roads entirely washed out. 

Scary damage reports include several homes destroyed in Lyndonville near Calendar Brook and multiple cars under water in East Burke, with no word on whether they were occupied; 

Roads closed by washouts and flooding include Route 5 in St. Johnsbury just south of the Vermont State Police barracks; Route 2 in East St. Johnsbury; Route 5/Memorial Drive in St. Johnsbury; Route 114 in East Burke where a bridge has washed away; Route 111 in Morgan and Route 105 near Brighton State Park.  

The Passumpsic River in Passumpsic went from far below flood stage to moderate flood stage in just 75 minutes. This river is now reaching major flood stage.  This is the same river that caused major flooding on July 11 during Vermont's previous big flood episode earlier this month. 

Route 5 in St. Johnsbury this morning.
Photo via Facebook, Marissa Gadapee

I'm expecting some home and business owners who suffered through floods on July 11 and were just starting to clean up were hit again overnight. Which is beyond awful. 

The flooding overnight was limited to the Northeast Kingdom. Most of the rest of Vermont had little or no rain yesterday and overnight. Montpelier, just 36 miles from St. Johnsbury, reported just 0.09 inches of rain. 

The only other trouble spot yesterday in Vermont was not nearly as severe. Slow moving thunderstorms in Rutland County prompted a flood warning, but little damage was reported. 

The Vermont State Airport just south of Rutland received a little over two inches of rain in two hours. Hail slightly bigger than quarters was reported in North Clarendon. 

WHAT HAPPENED?

An odd, slow moving storm system - essentially a nor'easter with an odd path moved westward off the Atlantic Ocean Sunday night into New England, then slowly northward through New Hampshire yesterday and overnight. 

It's been a weak system that caused little trouble for most of New England. But on its western flank, it causes lift in the atmosphere.  It was sort of the same idea as the band of heavy snow that often sets up in the winter well to the west and north of a nor'easter.

In this case, that lift in the atmosphere interacted with the humid air over us.  Winds in the atmosphere were light, so the storms moved slowly. In the Northeast Kingdom, the dreaded training storms - one right after another in the same spot - set up, causing the catastrophic flash flooding.

This is a weird weather pattern that is incredibly hard to forecast, so it's not surprising that we didn't really have alerts that this would happen until the emergency was unfolding. 

As dawn arrived, this weather set up was breaking down and the storms were moving away. But the damage is done. 

NOT OUT OF THE WOODS

The forecast for the rest of the week in Vermont is not good. Storm risks and possible local flash flooding is in the forecast off and on through Saturday. Here's the day by day breakdown:

Today

Hot and humid again, which is bad for flood recovery in the Northeast Kingdom. Scattered thunderstorms will develop this afternoon - hit and miss again. But a couple storms could be severe with isolated reports of damaging winds possible. Worse, these storms could have torrential downpours which could cause new isolated spots of flash flooding.

That's especially true if they hit parts of the Northeast Kingdom and Rutland County that have already received the heavy rain.  However, the threat of new flooding anywhere in Vermont is thankfully pretty low this afternoon and evening. 

Wednesday.

This is the most worrisome day of the bunch. A pretty potent disturbance is set to come through with its own batch of showers and storms.  Heavy downpours will be more widespread than they are today. 

NOAA's Storm Prediction Center has much of Vermont in a Level 2 of a four-point scale of flash flood risk on Wednesday and Wednesday evening.  That means we should expect scattered instance of flash flooding, so we'll need to be on the alert for that.

Thursday/Friday

Very warm to hot, quite humid again as this grinds on.  We should see scattered storms in the afternoon and evening both days, but at this point, anyway, it doesn't look like it will be anything widespread.

Saturday

A cold front will be approaching marking the beginning of a change in this weather pattern.  That's the good news. The bad news is this cold front could increase heavy showers and storms again, which would increase a local flash flood threat again.

Sunday and Beyond

The forecast is still a little iffy, but signs suggest a turn to cooler, much less humid air, with a much lower chance of heavy rain.  There's still questions as to when the cold front comes through and how far south it gets once it passes, but the signals are hopeful