Evacuations Ordered After Severe Weather Event in US - One Dead After Being 'Overwhelmed' by the Force of It
Heavy rain washed out roads and forced evacuations in the Northeast on Monday as more downpours were forecast throughout the day.
One person in New York drowned as she was trying to leave her home.
The slow-moving storm reached New England in the morning after hitting parts of New York and Connecticut. Heavy downpours with possible flash flooding were forecast in parts of Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
One of the worst hit places was New York’s Hudson Valley, where rescuers found the body of a woman in her 30s whose home was surrounded by water.
The force of the flash flooding dislodged boulders, which rammed the woman’s house and damaged part of its wall, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus told The Associated Press. Two other people escaped.
“She was trying to get through [the flooding] with her dog,” Neuhaus said, “and she was overwhelmed by tidal-wave type waves.”
He said many roads and bridges were washed out.
Officials believed everyone was accounted for, but they were trying to reach people to make sure they were OK.
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a state of emergency Sunday for Orange County. That included the town of Cornwall, near the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, where many roads were flooded and closed off.
Route 218 from cornwall to West point is gone pic.twitter.com/zdxMJAkQ7M
— NsfwWx ❄️ (@NsfwWx) July 10, 2023
The storm also interrupted air and rail travel.
As of early Monday, there were hundreds of flight cancellations at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports and more than 200 canceled at Boston’s Logan Airport in the last 24 hours, according to the Flightaware website.
Amtrak temporarily suspended service between Albany and New York.
Vermont Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency on Sunday in advance of Monday’s rain.
Some campers and people caught in their homes have been rescued in central and southern Vermont, and more reports have been coming in, said Mark Bosma, spokesman for the state emergency management office.
By the morning, some towns reported 2.5 to 4 inches of rain since midnight, and similar totals were expected during the day, said Robert Haynes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont.
“We still look like we’re on track for that potentially significant, locally catastrophic flooding,” Haynes said.
Serious, life-threatening flooding is occurring today across much of Vermont. Emergency crews have conducted rescues in multiple communities. About two dozen state roads are closed as of 10AM. Flash flood warnings are in effect from the Massachusetts line to the Canadian border. pic.twitter.com/09ryZ1N7bR
— Vermont State Police (@VTStatePolice) July 10, 2023
Vermont had some of its worst weather during Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011, when it got 11 inches of rain in 24 hours.
“This is one of those unique events that we don’t see very often around here,” meteorologist Marlon Verasamy in Burlington said of Monday’s storm.
He said the ground was already saturated and rivers were relatively high from recent heavy rains. Parts of southern Vermont had mudslides and road flooding from a storm Friday night into Saturday morning.
“It’s the same area being hit today,” he said.
Irene killed six people in the state, washed homes off their foundations and damaged or destroyed more than 200 bridges and 500 miles of highway.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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