GOOD MORNING, UPPER VALLEY!
Warm, humid, rainy, chance of thunderstorms, flood watches in effect from noon through midnight. Rain will be widespread today—a chance first thing, likely by mid-morning—as a fresh system tracks across the region. Temps today will be a bit more moderate than yesterday, reaching 80 or thereabouts, but with the humidity it's still going to feel plenty warm. Rainy or showery through the night, lows in the upper 60s again.Those flood watches cover most of Vermont and all of Coos, Carroll, and Grafton counties in NH.
Here's Paul Heintz's writeup in VTDigger: Rebecca Duell, a meteorologist in the weather service’s Burlington office, says slow-moving thunderstorms will probably produce the most rainfall between 2 p.m. and 9 p.m. “It’s going to be very heavy at times,” she says, and maybe torrential in spots.
Today's weather arrives on top of "thousand-year floods" that just hit Northeast Kingdom. More than 8 inches of rain fell Monday night into yesterday morning in St. Johnsbury and nearly as much in Lyndonville and other nearby towns, as a slow-moving thunderstorm broke rainfall records for the region. The flash-flood damage in St. J is "significant," Mark Bosma of the state Emergency Management Dept. told Seven Days' Rachel Hellman and Jack McGuire. “I’ve been around for a while, and I don’t ever remember a storm stopping and dropping this much rain in one area,” he said. In the Washington Post (gift link), meteorologist Matthew Cappucci explains what happened.Some of the flood damage in photos. WPTZ has a carousel. And here's the AP writeup, along with video.The thinker. A poised—and, for a fleeting moment, still—hummingbird up on Dothan Road in WRJ, from Taylor Haynes. It's a female ruby-throated hummingbird, Ted Levin writes: "the only breeding hummer east of the 100th meridian."It's been a busy few days for the Lebanon police. Yesterday, they put out an unusual press release noting "a surge in incidents" over the weekend. They included a Nevada man threatening employees at the Sandri Stop Smart in West Leb with a ski pole, a report of a Lyft passenger fraudulently using another person's bank information to pay for the ride, several drug and alcohol incidents, a California man shouting obscenities and throwing items from a vehicle parked in a driveway, and an 18-year-old taking a dump truck and an excavator for joy rides around the Lebanon Landfill. Monday night, officers talked a man down from the Bridge Street bridge who'd threatened to jump.Dartmouth, Hanover step up river safety warnings after student's death. Police are still investigating 20-year-old Won Jang's presumed drowning July 7, reports John Lippman in the Valley News. But in the meantime, Dartmouth Safety and Security has stepped up patrols by the water and college officials are discussing safety enhancements like increased lighting. Hanover police and fire have also been meeting with students—and stressing, as Fire Chief Michael Gilbert says, that just below the river's surface lies a lot of debris from the old Ledyard Bridge. "I don’t want people thinking there are some parts where it’s safe to jump," he tells Lippman. "It’s not. It’s all dangerous.”SPONSORED: Ted Levin invites you on his 8th Costa Rican natural history adventure! Remote yet hospitable, Costa Rica is the gem of Central America. More than a quarter of its land conserved. From sea level to 10,000 feet, the country sports old-growth jungles, volcanoes, shorelines, and remote beaches. Last year's trip recorded 320 species of birds, including 32 species of hummingbirds, 11 parrots, and a half dozen resplendent quetzals; nineteen species of mammals; 26 species of reptiles and amphibians. Experience the remote yet hospitable beauty of Costa Rica. Email [email protected]Advance Transit to open new express "Pink route" between Hanover and Lot 9. The lot, which serves Dartmouth commuters, sits near Jesse's off Route 120, and the new route will get a trial run starting Aug. 1, then its official launch Sept. 3, AT says in a press release. Between mid-morning and early afternoon, the Pink route will also run out to Centerra Park, with stops at River Valley Club and the Lebanon Co-op. Here's a map, with the trial run's hours and stops.Citizen's Bank shrinks its Upper Valley footprint with Hanover branch closure. The branch will shut its doors in October, reports Caroline Frost in the VN, leaving just two Citizen's locations in the region, in West Leb and Claremont. The bank once had locations in WRJ, Lebanon, Woodstock, and Norwich, as well; all those are gone. Neither local Citizen's employees nor its headquarters would comment, Frost writes, but the impending closure "is the latest example of how in-person banking services are becoming a thing of the past." Four other banks still have branches in downtown Hanover.SPONSORED: CABARET—one week only at Northern Stage! Don't miss incredible performances from local teenagers in Northern Stage's 2024 Summer Musical Theater Intensive production of CABARET, considered by many to be one of the most influential musicals written for the American stage. Directed by Broadway veteran Kevin David Thomas, the professional production features talented student actors and a live band. Runs through Aug. 4 at The Barrette Center for the Arts. $29 General Admission, $19 Student/Youth tickets. Sponsored by Northern Stage."I want everybody to read this novel." It would be fair to say that the Norwich Bookstore's Carin Pratt likes Pearl, Siân Hughes' debut, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize. In writing that is "frank, observant, and magical, often in the same paragraph," Hughes tells the story of a woman named Marianne whose mother, when Marianne was just eight, disappeared. Hughes traces the reverberations through Marianne's life in a novel that, Carin writes, is touched with a sense of fairy tale and is ultimately about forgiveness. "It's a mystery, a love story, an incantation, and a marvel," she concludes.After 28 years driving the Upper Valley's roads, "Mr. FedEx" gets ready to hang up his gas pedal. Odds are good that if you've been out and about in and around Norwich, you've seen Carl Schellong at work. And you'll still be able to—but only until Aug. 31. That's when, he tells Demo Sofronas for Demo's About Norwich newsletter, he plans to retire. Schellong grew up on a small farm in N. Pomfret, went to Woodstock Union and Norwich University (he played football at both), and then held a series of office jobs until he decided he didn't want to have an office. He fills Demo in on his career.Sununu signs bill to protect umpires and refs. The measure, which passed NH's legislature in May, allows judges "to ban people from athletic competitions if they’ve been convicted of assault, harassment, stalking, mischief, reckless conduct or threatening involving a sports official on the field of play or immediate vicinity," reports Rick Green in the Keene Sentinel. Wrote one ref in support of the bill, "I have heard of, and seen footage of, instances where sports officials have actually been chased and/or harmed by spectators, parents, coaches who lose control of their civil behavior..."There's uphilling. And then there's this. Back in January, in Stowe, Noah Dines started out on a singular quest: to ski 3 million vertical feet in a year. Uphill. By earlier this month—when GearJunkie's Will Brendza caught up with him, the Bedford, Mass. native had gotten to 2,067,000 feet by heading to Chamonix, France in February, Innsbruck and Saint Anton, Austria in March, then back to VT and NH, on to UT, and then to Oregon, where he spoke to Brendza from Mount Hood. In all that time, he said, he had only six days without touching snow. The biggest challenge this year? Hot weather.The "defining image of the Olympics"? Maybe—there are a lot of photos still to come. But Jérôme Brouillet’s photo of Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina appearing to float above the ocean at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday is getting attention for good reason. In The Guardian, Carly Earl and Graham Russell explain how Brouillet got the shot. Brouillet himself is nonchalant. "For sure everyone will forget about it next week," he says.
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Today at 5 pm, James Baldwin and others reflect on the Civil Rights movement in I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
Baldwin is at the center of the 1982 documentary by the husband-and-wife filmmakers Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, not as a protagonist, but as more of a guide. He visits Little Rock, Selma, Atlanta, and other spots key to Black history, in the company of fellow writers or participants in events there. This is a newly restored version by the Harvard Film Archive, and the archive's director, Haden Guest, will be on hand to introduce it and for a discussion afterward. In the Hop's Loew Auditorium.
with a chance to see the dress rehearsal of the popular Sondheim musical today at 5 pm. Its Saturday and Sunday performances are sold out, but you can get tix to tonight's rehearsal by emailing [email protected] (just hit the link above)—and
And
of the ON stage crew shifting the stage from 1930s Sicily for Rigoletto to the flooring for Sondheim's edgy set of fairy tales.
The VT-based jazz trio of Bob Gagnon (guitar), Andy Smith (bass), and Steve Sawyer (sax, clarinet) formed in the early '90s—they met while playing in a 16-piece big band—and they've been collaborating ever since. Outdoors at Artistree in S. Pomfret, in the Hayloft if it rains.
And for today...
Jacqueline Baghdasaryan was born in Armenia, grew up in Belarus, and in 2014 moved to France to study at the Lille Conservatory. There, she met Frenchman and multi-instrumentalist Louis Thomas, and together they founded a band, Ladaniva, devoted to music inspired by traditional music from Armenia, Russia, and the Balkans—but happy to dip into influences from wherever they travel, including Latin America and Africa.
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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