Read the latest on Friday's storm: ‘There will be damage’ as Debby arrives, officials warn Vermonters to stay vigilant
Tropical depression Debby is moving north and threatening to bring heavy rains with it.
The worst of the storm is expected to go west of Vermont, but there is a flood watch in effect for northern and central Vermont, as well as northern New York and New Hampshire. There are also flood warnings and wind advisories in parts of the region.
Gov. Phil Scott and other officials provided updates on the storm at 11 a.m. Friday. Video courtesy ORCA Media.
Chris Kurdek is a meteorologist at the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, and he joined Jake Rusnock live during Morning Edition for a brief update on the continuing storm and outlook. This interview was recorded at 6:45 a.m.
Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and have been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
Jake Rusnock: Maybe we should start in the Northeast Kingdom, where there is currently a flood warning in effect.
Chris Kurdek: Yes, it does look like the East Branch of Passumpsic will hit flood stage around 6 feet this morning. Good news is it looks like most of Vermont will get a good lull in precipitation through much of the midday hours today. Much of the heavy rain has moved out of Caledonia County. It's working its way north the international border that is in Vermont. So again, we'll get a nice lull, hopefully some of these brooks, streams and rivers will have a chance to drain out before we get another whopping of rain later this evening here in Vermont. A bit of a different story over there in New York.
Jake Rusnock: Well, you know, whenever we start hearing about heavy rain these days, it starts to raise stress levels. And since you mentioned heavier in New York, what can our listeners in that neck of the woods expect?
Chris Kurdek: Absolutely, I know many of us have been on the edge of our seats when we every we hear heavy rain or thunderstorm potential. I know I've got some trauma from last summer as well as this summer. A lot of us have lived through some traumatic situations these past summers, which isn't really typical for our climate, but yet it does look like northern New York will get the brunt of this storm. We're expecting a general 3 to 5 inches of rainfall over the Adirondacks west into the St. Lawrence Valley. That's a bit out of our forecast area, but the St. Lawrence Valley in northern New York and the Northeast into Quebec looks to get the highest rainfall totals from this system.
And I think many of us know that the Adirondacks are very mountainous, so very similar situations can occur in those mountainous areas, like they have in the past in Vermont. So washouts, especially on some of those dirt or unpaved roads, even maybe some smaller streams overfilling their banks, as well as some landslides possible in the steepest terrain over there in northern New York, again, this is where the brunt of the storm will take place today. Unlike here in Vermont, where we'll get a solid lull in precipitation or just some scattered showers through midday today, New York will see periods of heavy rain throughout the day today, and that will continue overnight.
Jake Rusnock: Do you have any expectations of rain totals back here in Vermont throughout the day?
Chris Kurdek: So yes, our overnight precipitation did overperform a little bit here in the Northeast Kingdom. I think we're approaching around 2 inches already here in st Johnsbury. Again, silver lining, we do get drier conditions, relatively drier conditions, through the day today here in the Northeast Kingdom into much of Vermont. You know, once we go over the border into New York, I would say a general, you know, 2.5 to 4.5 inches are expected over much of northern New York, particularly the Adirondacks. Even higher totals, above 5 inches as you work your way into the St. Lawrence Valley, as well as isolated areas in the Adirondacks.
Jake Rusnock: Let's talk about the wind before I let you go. We have a wind advisory this afternoon for the Champlain Valley and the western slopes of the Greens. And you know, I live on the western slopes, and I hear that wind howling down the Mount Mansfield. And I'm just wondering, with the ground so saturated, what we can expect with the wind and possible trees falling down.
Chris Kurdek: The ground hasn't been too saturated on that side of the Green Mountains, relatively speaking to what we've endured on the eastern side here of the Green Mountains in the Northeast Kingdom. The winds have been a bit tricky to pinpoint with this system, but some latest guidance suggests we could see gusts up to 50 mph, again on those western slopes. So western Rutland County, up through Addison County, and then through the Champlain Valley. We'll get some channeling effects through that valley, the north to south oriented valley there. So I don't think we'll see any widespread power outages. Some isolated to scattered power outages are not out of the question. Obviously, there's leaves on the trees, but we don't get that heavy loading that we often see during the storms in the winter.
And the good news about this storm in general that I wanted to share with everybody, it will be a quick mover, as an upper level trough will quickly move it downstream overnight. Unlike many of these other storms we had these past couple summers, we had these super saturated, subtropical air mass linger over us, and that's what led to much of the devastation, as well as a little bit more prolonged than this system there.
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