Vermont was supposedly safe from the worst climate risks. Then came relentless floods

On a single day in late July, a pretty normal looking summer storm dropped a record 8 inches of rain over the Northeast Kingdom in just 24 hours.

Rivers and brooks swelled rapidly and jumped their banks. Homes that had sat in the same place for hundreds of years were swept away.

In the hard-hit village of Lyndonville, it was the fifth time in 13 months the town saw flooding, and the second time in July alone. Plenty of other Vermont towns were flooded at least three times in the last year.

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Vermont has a reputation for being a place that is relatively safe from the worst impacts of climate change. However, the latest series of climate fueled flooding disasters is raising questions about whether that’s the case.

Lyndonville Fire Chief Jeff Corrow said in 34 years of firefighting there, he thought he’d seen it all.

“This is an event that we’ve never had before to this degree,” he told Vermont Public reporter Peter Hirschfeld outside the fire station on July 31. “We’re venturing down a road that we haven’t been on. And it’s not a good road to be on.”

Lyndonville and the surrounding Northeast Kingdom communities aren’t alone in being on that road.

By at least one count, Washington County — home to Montpelier — is now tied for being the second-most disaster prone county in America. That’s if you count the number of federal disaster declarations from 2011 through 2023, as the think tank Rebuild by Design did.

Part of the problem, says Dartmouth College professor Jonathan Winter, is the rate at which storm systems are dropping precipitation over the region. Winter, a geographer, says human-caused climate change is making Vermont and its neighboring states up and down the Atlantic coast to New Jersey, much wetter.

His research finds the Northeast now sees 50% more extreme precipitation than it did before 1995, a finding that’s supported by the Fifth National Climate Assessment.

The mechanics behind this are fairly straightforward: As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more moisture, and that means more rain when that moisture gets wrung out.

So far, Winter says in New England, it seems, “We’re getting the same storms, they just have more fuel to work with once they get here.”

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It’s a trend Winter says will likely continue as the climate warms, but that could be much improved if the world makes meaningful reductions in the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we humans produce.

On the flipside, if very little is done, the Northeast is expected to continue to see much more extreme rain.

This trend has come as an unpleasant surprise for many Vermonters — in particular, for farmers. Jon Wagner co-owns Bear Roots Farm in Williamstown and Barre, where he grows organic vegetables.

Wagner used to farm on Long Island. But that ended after his fields were inundated with saltwater during Superstorm Sandy. He says they watched the vegetables turn black in the field overnight, and saw their soil get burned by saltwater.

“So we decided to move up to Vermont, a landlocked place where theoretically it couldn’t flood,” Wagner said. “But it turns out you can.”

After farming through nearly a decade of drought — something else Vermont is seeing more of with climate change — a flash flood and sustained wet weather swept away about 75% of their harvest last summer.

“We basically came into the season on credit card debt,” he said. “So we’re still kind of taking it a week at a time, just trying to stay afloat.”

This year, they’re growing everything they can up on higher ground, including a couple of acres of heirloom pumpkins and winter squash. The relatively warm weather this summer has accelerated the pace of the growing season, and that’s been a welcome relief, Wagner said.

But in some places, higher ground brings other hazards in a changing climate.

Up high in the Green Mountains in Ripton, there’s growing concern about landslides wiping out their mostly dirt roads.

Last summer during a torrential rainstorm, a hillside collapsed in the night, sweeping an entire home off of its foundation before the owner’s eyes. It was one of 82 landslides recorded by the Agency of Natural Resources after the July 2023 flooding event, and one of 11 that required a same-day evacuation.

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“Landslides were not really a thing up here, except perhaps on Route 125, coming up the mountain,” said Laurie Cox, chair of the Ripton Select Board.

Cox said no one expected a landslide to jeopardize a home in Ripton, and the fact that one did is unsettling.

“All of that makes one realize that everything that you thought was solid under your feet isn’t always solid,” she said.

Ripton is looking at rebuilding an old road that’s more of a trail now, so that emergency vehicles can get in and out if the highway is swept away in a future storm.

And state officials with Gov. Phil Scott’s administration have called for a new statewide “Landslide Taskforce” to coordinate evacuations during storms.

The Flood Safety Act, a new state law passed this year, makes it harder to build new structures in places where rivers are likely to wash them away.

But with entire 200-plus year old communities located in places that now flood, these are not the only changes the state will be forced to contemplate in the coming decades.

More from Vermont Public: Capitol Recap: Vermont lawmakers’ new Flood Safety Act wants to bolster rivers, wetlands as natural mitigation

For his part, Jon Wagner of Bear Roots Farm says he’s grateful Vermont has water, and doesn’t have to contend with sea level rise.

Still, he says he doesn’t think of any place as being safe from climate change.

“I think ultimately, it is affecting everyone everywhere,” he said.

And while it presents a challenge for farming here, Wagner says he’s determined to adapt.

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