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Vermont: Risks & Trends

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Same standard as every other page on this site: every figure below is independently sourced, and figures that vary across sources, or measure genuinely different things, are flagged as such rather than collapsed into one number that looks more precise than the underlying data actually supports.

Tropical Storm Irene (2011)

MetricFigure
Date August 28, 2011
Rainfall Up to 11 in
Vermont deaths 6
Roads damaged/destroyed 2,400+
Homes/businesses destroyed 800
Bridges damaged/destroyed 300 (including historic covered bridges)
Power outages 117,000
Communities cut off entirely 13, resupplied by helicopter
Vermont damage $733 million
National damage total (all of Irene) $14.3 billion, the sixth-costliest hurricane in U.S. history
Historical ranking Vermont's worst natural disaster since the 1927 flood

The July 2023 floods

MetricFigure
Dates July 9-12, 2023
Rainfall statewide 3-9 in over 48 hours
Highest single total 9.20 in, Calais, Washington County
Deaths 2
Damage $600 million+
Winooski River crest at Montpelier 21.35 ft, 2+ ft above Irene's crest at the same location
Historical ranking Second only to the 1927 flood's 27.10 ft crest at Montpelier

A record broken in barely a decade, without a hurricane's name attached

Irene’s flooding came from a named tropical storm; the July 2023 flood came from an ordinary, if extreme, multi-day rain event with no storm name at all, yet it broke Irene’s own river-crest record at Montpelier by more than two feet. This is the same “recent record, not distant history” pattern flagged on Maine’s page (a 46-year gap there), except Vermont’s gap between record floods was under 12 years.

Sources