Cleaning Up After Irene; Transportation Challenges in Vermont

The enormity of the flooding is now clear; the long arduous task of cleaning up the mess has started.

Irene created the worst flooding Vermont has seen in over eighty years - say anything in Vermont about how Irene was overblown and you'll wake up in the ER.

One under-reported item I wanted to call attention to was the damage to Vermont's rail network. The rail system is starting to work again, but took a major pounding (just as the Vermont road network did). Most notably, the New England Central Railroad and the Green Mountain Railroad (part of Vermont Rail System) are out of commission on their main lines, with numerous washouts and knocked-out bridges. For train nerds like myself, this is the story I'll be watching - will the damage be too much to justify both of their rebuildings? Flooding in New England was the doom of several rail lines in the 1930s. Hopefully, I'm way off base here.

I'm wrapping up my own following of news from waterlogged upstate New York and Vermont; but here are some places to keep tabs on how recovery efforts are going:

For Vermont:

Burlington Free Press

Rutland Herald

Vermont Public Radio (Irene-specific links here and here)

For New York:

Albany Times-Union

The Watershed Post

For Rail news:

Google News Search: "Vermont railroad Irene"

VRS and Rutland RR Yahoo! group

New England Central Railroad Yahoo! group

Irene's Soggy Finish

By Sunday night, what was left of Irene crossed into Canada, and was no longer tropical.

The intervening hours were not as kind.

The good news: Irene's wind and storm surge damage ended up being lighter than expected.

The bad news: Lighter, however - not light. Some mild coastal flooding in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. There was a lot of wind damage in NC, Virginia, and New Jersey, and extensive power outages in Virginia, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

The ugly news: Vermont and upstate New York got dumped on; extensive flooding is wreaking havoc in the Catskills and Adirondacks, and every - every - major highway in Vermont has flood damage. (And not just roads.) That part of Irene's legacy is still emerging.

Here Comes Irene

Latest forecasts put her ashore in NC this evening, then trailing her coat along the Mid-Atlantic states until reaching New York City Saturday night and New England Saturday night and Sunday morning.

The good news: the storm is weakening.

The bad news: her forecast path will still cause significant coastal flooding and put high winds and a lot of rain on top of a lot of people, just because of the densely populated region the hurricane will be hitting. New York City is evacuating hundreds of thousands, and just the transportation disruptions will last well into next week.

Going to be a long weekend.

Down By The Water

"Down By The Water," The Decemberists.