Updated: Postcards from a Vermont on the Edge [Photos and Video]

[nadinbrzezinski]

It's not that I thought the Green Mountain State would be unscathed. While plenty of mainstream media outlets and weather prognosticators (cough cough) were focusing narrowly on coastal wind speeds and storm surge, the experts that I rely on -- namely Jeff Masters at Weather Underground and Andrew Freedman of Climate Central and the Capital Weather Gang (and an occasional OnEarth contributor) -- were warning that inland flooding from massive rains was the biggest and most underanticipated threat.

We knew that Vermont was going to get slammed by rain, and that our ground was already saturated from record precipation all summer. We knew that there would be flooding. I just figured that Vermont would be safer than, say, a city of eight million people that sat directly in the storm's path.

Unfortunately, Vermont got hit harder than our worst fears. As of this writing, there have been two deaths officially reported in the state, there are two men missing in Rutland (the "big" city nearest my home), and according to Vermont Public Radio, "nearly every major highway in the state has been damaged." Update: Sadly, three people have been reported dead, and a fourth is still missing.

http://www.onearth.org/blog/vermont-irene-damage

Has a good list on damaged roads et al