GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Flash flood warning in effect. As you may have noticed, it's raining out there. The Weather Service is predicting anywhere from 4-6" for parts of Windsor and Orange counties, and 1-4" as you move eastward through the Upper Valley. Flooding and road washouts are all possible. Rain will last all day, along with a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening. Highs in the mid-70s, lows mid-60s.This morning around 7:30, VT Emergency Management issued a flash flood warning for the towns along the Connecticut and as far west as Woodstock, from the Orange County line down to Springfield. It lasts through 1:30 pm.Keep track. Whatever things are like out now, it will probably get worse today and overnight. Here are some resources:
VT Emergency Management's FB page, which they update regularly;
NH Homeland Security and Emergency Management on Twitter (a little quicker to post than their FB page, but thanks to new Twitter policies you can only get to it if you're a Twitter user); here's FB.
Track road closures and highway cams at New England 511. Right now, flooding has closed a portion of Route 4 west of Woodstock and VT 107 from its intersection with VT 100 in Stockbridge to VT 12 in Bethel; flooding Friday closed part of Route 14 at Vesper Road in Royalton, which at last report now has one lane open;
If you prefer it in words, the VT's VermontAlert is providing a steady stream of road closure and other alerts on FB.
Here are the National Weather Service FB pages for their offices in Burlington (which covers VT and the Adirondacks) and Gray, ME (which covers NH and ME); that's where they're posting regular updates;
To get a dramatic graphical sense of things, you can track the rising water levels at the Union Village Dam. (Thanks, JF!).
And for a broader regional view, Weather Underground is running a live update page for VT, NH, ME, and NY.
So far, the heaviest rain has fallen in southern VT, where rescues have been required in at least three towns.
Plus a rescue in Bridgewater.
, swiftwater rescues had been carried out in Andover, Londonderry and Weston, including the rescue of 11 people at a campground in Andover. In addition, reports Eric Francis to Daybreak (no link), the Hartford Fire Department and its Swift Water Rescue Team were called out around 6:30 a.m. to River Road near the Bridgewater General Store on Route 4 for a water rescue near the confluence of Broad Brook (which comes down from Plymouth Notch) and the Ottauquechee. Eric adds: "The White River is currently at 6 feet. It is expected to crest at just over 16 feet overnight. Flood stage is 18 feet. Tropical Storm Irene was just over 28 feet." “People should exercise extreme caution today,” says VT Emergency Management's Mark Bosma. “We’ve already had to rescue some people. If they see rising water, get to higher ground. Chart out an evacuation route now.” VT Gov. Phil Scott will hold a briefing on the storm at 11 am,
It's still closed in the area of Mission Farm Road. If for some reason you're headed that way, you can bypass it using Mission Farm Road (but not if you're in a tractor-trailer). Burgundy link goes to the Killington PD's photo of the mess on Friday
(thanks, EB!)
. Here's
.
That's because restoration work on the bridge is scheduled to begin this summer and to last through the make-or-break fall foliage season, reports Alex Hanson in the
Valley News
. The work, which will include painting, replacing deteriorated beams, partially replacing the bridge’s deck, and widening sidewalks, will require closing one lane, and is due to last (except during the winter) until 2026. Only a single contractor responded to VTrans request for bids, Hanson reports. There'll be a public hearing Thursday.
The former mineral mine in Grafton, which closed in 2016, was bought by a New York-based production company in 2019—which owes about $7,800 in back taxes, reports the
VN
's Liz Sauchelli. Bidding opens a week from Friday and area non-profits, including Mascoma Valley Preservation, are watching closely, writes Sauchelli. “MVP certainly wants to see a good outcome for Ruggles—one that keeps the cultural landscape intact and ideally open to the public,” the group's president, Andrew Cushing, tells her.
And Northern Stage is Exhibit A in Fred Thys'
VTDigger
story on the lasting effects on theater companies around Vermont. For one thing, it not only made its outdoor stage permanent, but has contracted out half of its set-building for its next production (
Twelfth Night
in August) to an upstate NY firm. Plus, managing director Jason Smaller tells Thys, the leftover housing crunch has been a challenge: “It is becoming increasingly difficult to hire. It all comes down to housing," he says.
That was a cousin of 34-year-old Tommy Shea, who was found dead in his WRJ apartment a couple of weeks back—possibly from an overdose, writes Jim Kenyon in the
VN
, though toxicology reports aren't back yet. Kenyon pens a profile of Shea, who'd become an occasional public presence for Hartford Dismas House long after he'd moved out of the transitional housing it offers, worked at Dan & Whit's while he was at Dismas, and struggled for years with painkillers and heroin. He “craved knowledge and loved to read. He could talk about anything," says former Dismas development director Jeff Backus.
Last December, the government "nullified" its 1954 decision to revoke the nuclear physicist's security clearance. "Why now, sixty-eight years after the infamous [McCarthy Era] security hearing, and fifty-five years after Oppenheimer’s death, did the Biden Administration find the courage" to make that move, asks Kai Bird in
The New Yorker
. Bird, co-author of an Oppenheimer biography, traces efforts that begain in 2010 but gathered steam in 2016, when Norwich's Tim Rieser—a go-to problem-solver for former US Sen. Patrick Leahy—got involved.
(Thanks, CJ!)
Okay,
you
try playing the guitar with a blissed-out cow resting her head on your shoulder.
(Thanks, AFG!)
With a word from Friday's Daybreak.
Heads Up
It goes without saying that you should keep aware of what's going on with the weather and the roads, but so far...
At 2 pm today, the Oak Hill Music Festival will give an open rehearsal at the Roth Center on the Dartmouth Campus, with two different configurations of wind trios.
At 6 pm, the Enfield Public Library hosts local romance novelist Jamie Orr for a presentation on the ins and outs of self-publishing: giving your book a professional look and feel, how royalties work, the pros and cons of publishing exclusively on Amazon vs. "publishing wide," and more.
And at 7 pm, the Norwich Bookstore hosts wealth and poverty analyst Chuck Collins and nationally known environmentalist Gus Speth for a conversation about Collins' new novel, Altar to an Erupting Sun. In the book, Collins, who lives in Guilford VT and works for the Institute for Policy Studies, the left-leaning DC think tank, traces the fallout from a decision by a longtime climate change activist to dispense with protests and instead kill an oil company exec.
And in case you need some diversion from staring out the window...
off her forthcoming album.
Back with more tomorrow.
Written and published by Rob Gurwitt Writer/editor: Tom Haushalter Poetry editor: Michael Lipson About Rob About Tom About Michael
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