Vermont

Debby causes delays at Logan, outages in Vermont – The Boston Globe

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New England caught a glancing blow from the remnants of Hurricane Debby as the storm that hammered swaths of the South and Mid-Atlantic with tornadoes and flooding from heavy rain caused damage to an already stricken portion of Vermont.

Debby, a slow-moving storm that trundled up the Eastern Seaboard over the course of multiple days, made its way through and out of New England overnight Friday into Saturday without causing widespread flooding or bringing tornadoes to New England, as some had feared.

But the storm did bring some strong wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour in northern Vermont, where it damaged some buildings and toppled trees. In Alburgh, on the Canadian border, a large tree crashed into a house, and fire and rescue crews worked to eventually free three people inside, according to fire officials, but no serious injuries were reported. Power outages for more than 21,000 people in Vermont lingered into Saturday afternoon, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott sought and was granted a federal emergency declaration ahead of the storm, opening a path for monetary assistance. The northern reaches of the state were soaked by what Scott called “repeated” flooding last month, a year after catastrophic flooding did hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to some of the same areas.

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There, locals said they were worn down. Rick Dente, who owns Dente’s Market in Barre, worked to protect his business with plastic and sandbags as the rain poured down on Friday.

“There isn’t a whole lot else you can do,” he said.

Jaqi Kincaid, who was hit by flooding last month in Lyndon, Vermont, said the previous storm knocked out her garage and well, so her house has no water. It also felled a 120-foot tree and took down fencing.

Most of the heavy rain in New England on Friday was concentrated in central and northern Vermont, where nearly 3.5 inches fell in some spots. Rainfall totals ranged from 1 to 3 inches across much of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Western Massachusetts.

Though the teeth of the storm tracked west of New England, portions of the area were under a tornado watch on Friday, though no twisters were reported.

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On Friday, Logan International Airport saw more than 60 flights canceled, according to the flight-tracker website FlightAware. Flights coming into the airport were delayed an average of 2.5 hours, and departures pushed back about 40 minutes, the site showed Friday.

In a statement posted on social media ahead of the storm, the airport warned passengers that “flights may be impacted over the next few days,” and that anyone traveling should check with their airlines before coming to the airport.

Logan ranked fourth in the number of cancellations among US airports on Friday as the storm broadly disrupted travel.

As Saturday morning progressed, delays cleared up and the airport was quiet. The McNulty family said they were dealing with a cancellation that didn’t come from the storm — there was a problem with the air conditioning in Aruba, they were told — but the Plymouth residents said they’d been in a crowd of hundreds trying to deal with the various issues on Friday.

It took a couple of hours for them to be seen, Kayla McNulty, 33, estimated. So on Saturday morning, sitting in an airport Dunkin’, she said the family was just “trying to find somewhere else to go.”

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It remained windy on Saturday, but the rain had passed for much of New England. In Boston, a hot sun glared down as highs shot back into the 80s. Sunday will bring similar 80-plus temperatures and scattered clouds, according to the National Weather Service.

The NWS predicts some isolated storms are possible Monday afternoon in Boston, but expects an otherwise warm and dry week.

Debby first hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, crossing the peninsular state before ramming back into South Carolina, still as a hurricane, on Thursday. Even after it was downgraded to a tropical storm, Debby carved a path of destruction up just inland of the East Coast. The storm dumped more than 20 inches on some parts of Florida and other areas, causing flooding and spawning some tornadoes.

At least nine people have died related to Debby, most in vehicle accidents or from fallen trees.

On Thursday alone, tornadoes spawned by Debby leveled homes, damaged a school, and killed one person, as the tropical system dropped heavy rain and flooded communities across the Carolinas.

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Dramatic photographs showed flooding in Georgia, where multiple dams breached, and in Annapolis, Maryland, where stormwater swamped downtown and the US Naval Academy. On Friday, first responders launched high-water and helicopter rescues of people trapped in cars and homes in rural areas along the border of New York and northern Pennsylvania.

After leaving New England, the storm continued north into Canada.

Globe correspondent Alexa Coultoff and the Associated Press contributed.


Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter. Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman.

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