GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Heads up: No Daybreak next week or the week after. It's time to rest up from the year just past and to prep for the one ahead. Back as usual on Jan. 8. And Vordlers: No worries, it'll continue throughout—you can sign up for a reminder email here.Winter returns. Don't get whiplash. Remember that cold front coming in behind yesterday's storm? Well, today's highs look to be in the upper 30s, maybe 40 in the early afternoon—we're talking a good 20-25 degrees cooler than yesterday's high—and then start dropping, hitting the low 20s by dawn. There's a chance of snow and/or rain showers as well today. Maybe some sun, with winds shifting to come from the northwest in the afternoon.
Water: here and gone. We'll get to yesterday in a moment—this was actually last week...
When Larry Kilian went out on the Colette Trail in Enfield to check out the waterfalls. There'd been snow overnight amid rising temps, and the result, he writes, was "a tremendous flow of water that literally went everywhere."
The following day, he went back. It's from a slightly different angle, but even so, the drop in volume is remarkable.
Rain, winds bring flooding, outages, road closures, and more around VT, NH.
Let's start with the water. The Connecticut at West Leb crested last night at nearly 21 feet, just below minor flood stage; the White in W. Hartford was a couple of feet below flood stage as of yesterday evening, the Pemigewasset in Plymouth crested nearly at major flood stage last night, the Sugar River in W. Claremont was about a foot and a half below minor flood stage. Farther afield, the Winooski in both Waterbury and Montpelier, the Wells, the Passumpsic, and others all reached flood stage—and Moretown was evacuated yesterday afternoon after the Mad River flooded. River and dam levels at the underlined link above.
There are roads closed due to flooding or debris all over both states, including Cardigan Mountain Road in Orange, US 4 in Andover, N. Dorchester Rd. in Wentworth, Route 14 in Randolph, and 106 in Perkinsville. Here's where things stand now:
Though at one point there were widespread outages in New Hampshire, with some 40,000 reported out at midday yesterday, for the most part things are on a more even keel, with very few outages reported in VT, but still a few thousand in NH, including in Haverhill, Plainfield, Cornish, and elsewhere in the Upper Valley. Here's the Vermont outage map, and here's WMUR's set of links to outage maps from Unitil, Eversource, the NH Electric Coop, and Liberty.
For a sense of what happened around the two states, including a landslide in St. J, flooding and an evacuation in Campton, and more:
And here areVT Public's page of live updates as news came in yesterday and Anne Wallace Allen's wrapup in Seven Days as of yesterday evening.
In the
Valley News
, Frances Mize rounds up where things stood as of yesterday afternoon.
Don't forget: 12A bridge in Claremont is scheduled to close today. It's possible yesterday's weather may delay things—NHDOT hadn't responded to a query as of last night—but the plan was to close the bridge over the Sugar River entirely to traffic from 7 am to 7 pm today and tomorrow (and possibly Thursday) so crews can remove existing steel in the southbound lane. More when I hear more.SPONSORED: Help food-insecure families have a joyful holiday season. When you make a gift to Willing Hands by the end of the year, you'll enable neighbors experiencing food insecurity to put a nice meal on the table this holiday season—and your gift will be doubled thanks to the Jack & Dorothy Byrne Foundation. Don't miss this opportunity to double your impact and spread the holiday cheer! Sponsored by Willing Hands.Norwich settles open meetings lawsuit. Norwich resident Chris Katucki filed the suit in 2021, contending that the town had violated VT's Open Meeting Law by allowing subcommittees and advisory groups focused on town policies to operate without observing its requirements. On Friday, attorney Scott McGee—who stepped in this summer to help Katucki—announced the town has agreed to abide by the law from now on, though without admitting fault in the past. It has spent over $100K defending itself, Town Manager Brennan Duffy confirms—though the exaxt amount, he says in an email, "is not currently available." McGee's release at the link.Public ice skating to return to the Dartmouth Green. Last year, the 70' x 120' rink the college put up in 2017 and then again in 2021 never made its appearance; in 2021, it was open only to Dartmouth students and employees. But come January, writes Bill Platt for Dartmouth News, it's due to open to all comers, assuming cold weather—though unlike in the past, you'll need to bring your own skates. Initially, says the college's Jim Alberghini, who's been spearheading the effort, it'll be open 9 am to sunset, but they're hoping to add lights—and, he says, hold some of the activities that used to be possible on Occom Pond. And some new ones: maybe a silent disco on ice?New rock climbing center due to break ground in Lebanon this month. The Notch, which has been in the works for three years, will provide 12,300 square feet of climbing space—including for bouldering, top roping, and lead climbing—in the facility it'll build on LaBombard Road, off Route 120, reports Liz Sauchelli in the VN. Noah Lynd and Josh Garrison hatched the plan back in 2020 on a climbing trip to Utah, just before the pandemic. Last year, Sauchelli writes, they bought a 2.5-acre parcel near Dartmouth Coach; they expect construction to be done in October next year.SPONSORED: Our trails need you! Don’t take our increasingly vulnerable trails for granted. Climate change is challenging them and local trail heroes are retiring. While we at the Upper Valley Trails Alliance are working year-round for our trails and communities, we can't do it without you. We need your help to provide safe, sustainable trails and ensure public access to the vital benefits of outdoor recreation. Join the Alliance today and donate to help us close a budget gap and kick off our 25th year stronger than ever. Sponsored by UVTA. Hey, that thrift shop NC Wyeth painting? It sold for six figures. Remember the story? NH woman finds painting at a Savers, buys it for $4, it goes up on auction, buyer backs out, crestfallen couple—who'd been hoping for a trip to Germany to visit their son—reclaims the painting. Well, writes Matt Stevens in the NYT (gift link), someone at another auction house saw the story and was determined to close a sale with a collector—who, by happenstance, messaged her about wanting the painting. Last Thursday, the couple handed it over in Keene, checked their bank balance, then called their son to say they're coming.In NH, cheaper electric rates coming. Eversource, Unitil, and Liberty have either requested or gotten approval for lower energy supply rates come February, in the wake of falling natural gas prices, and the NH Electric Coop is expected to follow suit with a request this week, writes David Brooks on his Granite Geek blog. He explains what lies behind the drops, how utility bills are determined—and why Liberty's request for a dramatic boost in the distribution rate is both controversial and a potential sign of things to come as debate grows over how to pay for grid modernization.NHPR suit "part of a pattern of harassment," says NHPR president and CEO. Last week, Judge Daniel St. Hilaire ruled there was no evidence in reporter Lauren Chooljian's notes to back up Granite Recovery Centers founder Eric Spofford's charge that her reporting on sexual misconduct allegations against him were motivated by malice. In the Globe's Morning Report (no paywall), Steven Porter follows up with NHPR's Jim Schachter, who says the suit and vandalism directed at Chooljian and others are all efforts to intimidate reporters and sources. Chooljian, by the way, will be at AVA in Leb in February to talk about her 13th Step podcast, in which Spofford figures prominently.VT gets sued over new gun waiting period. The Vermont Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, joined by several gun shops, the state GOP chair, and the founder of the VT Women's Shooting Association, has taken the state to federal court over the 72-hour-waiting period it imposed for most gun purchases back in May. As Derek Brouwer writes in Seven Days, the legislature's Democratic majority saw the law—which also includes provisions requiring safe storage and a "red flag" expansion—as a suicide prevention step. Gov. Phil Scott allowed it to become law without his signature.Those FEMA trailers at the Hartford rest area? They may not be headed to Montpelier after all. In a move that surprised and thoroughly annoyed city officials yesterday, the federal agency confirmed to Report for America's Carly Berlin—reporting for both VTDigger and VT Public—that it's dropped plans to put in temporary housing for people displaced by last summer's floods on a golf course in town. The city had hoped the prep work would lay out infrastructure it could use for more permanent affordable housing. Instead, FEMA intends to put trailers in existing mobile home parks or on private property.In VT, conservative legal groups have become "potent force" in the schools. In a variety of instances, writes Peter D'Auria in VTDigger, an array of outside legal groups—Alliance Defending Freedom, the Institute for Justice, the Liberty Justice Center, Parents Defending Education, Liberty Counsel—have taken to the courts or threatened action to pursue an agenda to enlarge religious schools' access to taxpayer dollars and freedom from state strictures, or to safeguard religious or socially conservative individuals' right to pursue their beliefs. D'Auria lays out the various cases, including in Randolph, Woodstock, and Quechee.Jumping rope nine times in a minute is a world record? Yes. If you're a cat. Continuing an annual tradition UPI began, well, last year, Ben Hooper rounds up 10 of the more unusual Guinness records posted in 2023. There's that cat (in Missouri, complete with video); an Illinois dog's five-inch tongue, snout to tip (thankfully, no video); an Iranian man's record-setting 88 spoons balanced on his body; a 13 year-old girl's 38 magic tricks in one minute while submerged under water; the 12.1 seconds it took to assemble Mr. Potato Head blindfolded. Oh, and a cockatoo's 16-foot ride on a scooter. And more.Icebergs from space. No, no, not arriving from space, though that would be something. Visible from space. The European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who's currently up in the International Space Station, just took a bunch of photos of icebergs floating in the South Atlantic. "I have to admit that if you had asked me before this mission, if you could see icebergs with your naked eye from space, I would have said, 'No way,'" he wrote. "Turns out that you can!"The Tuesday Vordle. With a word from Daybreak that's in the news.
Daybreak doesn't get to exist without your support. Help it keep going by hitting the maroon button:
If you missed Willem Lange's annual reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol at St. Thomas in Hanover this past weekend, you've got another chance. This evening at 7, he'll be both in-person at Lost Nation Theater in Montpelier and livestreamed—using the script Dickens himself used, which Lange typed up for his own use when he was in college. He first performed the Dickens story for friends in 1975—the first two years in his living room in Hanover, then at St. Thomas. If you can't make it tonight, Lost Nation is recording and will make the performance available online through the end of the year.
The Tuesday poem.
Last night, an owlin the blue darktossed an indeterminate numberof carefully shaped sounds intothe world, in which,a quarter of a mile away, I happenedto be standing.I couldn’t tellwhich one it was –the barred or the great-hornedship of the air –it was that distant. I just stood there, listening and holding outmy hands to the soft glitterfalling through the air. I love this world,but not for its answers.And I wish good luck to the owl,whatever its name –and I wish great welcome to the snow,whatever its severe and comfortlessand beautiful meaning.
— From
by Mary Oliver.
See you tomorrow.
The Hiking Close to Home Archives. A list of hikes around
the Upper Valley, some easy, some more difficult, compiled by the Upper Valley Trails Alliance. It grows every week.
The Enthusiasms Archives. A list of book recommendations by Daybreak's rotating crew of local booksellers, writers, and librarians who think you should read. this. book. now!
Daybreak Where You Are: The Album. Photos of daybreak around the Upper Valley, Vermont, New Hampshire, and the US, sent in by readers.
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