In Windham, Vermont, a wooden A-frame house that normally evokes blustery winters sits on a roadway transformed by record rainfall into a river. Twenty miles away in Bridgewater, a man wades through waist-high waters clutching his belongings. In Montpelier, the state’s capital, life jacket-clad rescuers navigate rubber rescue boats, while in Berlin a helicopter crew extricates three people and a cat named Cricket.
Three days after a storm dumped nine inches of rain on Vermont — more than twice its typical rainfall for all of July — parts of the state are still inundated, and more rain is coming.
The flooding bears an eerie resemblance to 2011, when Hurricane Irene killed eight people in Vermont, destroyed homes and sheared a number of iconic covered bridges off of their foundations. Since then, the state has made major strides on flood preparation, but this week is making clear the scope of the threat ahead.
