BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Saint Johnsbury received more than eight inches of overnight, smashing the all-time record for one-day rainfall by over three inches.
The National Weather Service in Burlington says the overnight storm was extremely unusual, with heavy rain localized in the areas of the Northeast Kingdom that resulted in a “one in 1,000-year event.”
The NWS’s Peter Banacos says the storm caught both residents and meteorologists off guard. “The challenge of it, though, is the things that normally will organize rain — say a cold front, the mountains across Vermont — we always think about as being an organizing feature for what we call orographic precipitation. Those factors are not in play when we have a mid or upper-level low-pressure system, especially at night, when the low-level winds are weak. So, even though we knew there was some potential for locally heavy rainfall, it’s very difficult to pinpoint where that’s going to be,” he said.
The areas of Island Pond and Brighton got more than seven inches of rain in total and East Burke sustained over five.