As you surely know by now, Vermont has suffered historic flash flooding in the wake of Hurricane Irene, which passed through yesterday. The problems here were not caused by high winds or storm surge, but by massive amounts of rainfall over a short time. I live a couple miles uphill from the Battenkill and route 313, which runs alongside the river, and that meant that we were stranded all day yesterday because the river had jumped the banks in both directions. When the road became passable at about 9:00 this morning, I got out to shoot a little video of the famed trout river. But it doesn’t look too trouty today.
At the beginning, it just looks like high water, but when the shot pans to what is normally a golf course, you can see how much water has come down from the mountains. There’s actually another secondary channel on the other side of the golf course, so the river has effectively split in two. Keep in mind that the water has receded quite a bit from the crest last night, so it was much worse than this. It will be some time before we know the effects of such flooding on the fishery. We’ll keep you updated.