This Is Not My Summer

Radar last night before all hell broke loose.

It's not been a summer that I am used to. Fires in Quebec kept me indoors for two weeks because of smoke. I checked our AQI nearly every hour during those days. At one point, my Andrew had the dirtiest air in the world in Washington, DC. On another day, it was Anna living in the dirtiest air in New Haven. I kept seeing these alerts on my phone.

A smokey sunset in June.

Then there was heat. Up to 90°F (32°C); extremely difficult for Vermonters to deal with.  

Then the smoke came back; it was not as bad, though, but I did finally get an air conditioner because of it. You can't live in a house closed off from smoke in heat like that without air circulating.

Finally, the rain. It started on Sunday night and continued until Wednesday. You may have heard about the floods in Vermont. Everything closed up on Sunday night because of the forecasts. Our capitol city, Montpelier, an hour south of me, is still under water. 

The worst that happened here was the Barton River, an ancient ox-bow river that quickly floods roads. For two days Amy and I were cut off from everything because Route 5 was flooded from Barton Village to Orleans Village, about 8 miles. There has been no traffic by my house because nobody is out. Business and schools were closed all week.

Rain clouds across from Amy's house in Orleans.

The flood times can be scary for me. I am on the side of Barton Mountain with at least 3 brooks on my property draining into a state mapped wetlands across the road. I am nowhere close to the river. Usually all things are in balance. But in 2011, during the devastating rain of Tropical Storm Irene, my brooks flooded my road. The flash flood took out my driveway. I was anticipating a repeat of those bad days, but it did not happen. I did get some washout of the driveway, but it isn't bad. The worst part of the week was being cooped inside. And last night.

A bit of a washed out driveway.

Yesterday, the entire state watched for incoming thunderstorms from New York that could trigger more devastating floods. The governor even told us to stay home from 4PM to 8PM. And we all did. The storms got to my house around 8PM and they were bad. Lightning struck on the mountain and across the road. The noise was painful and scary. But no fires started from the strikes and the wind did not bring down trees here. The first photo of this post was of radar five minutes before the storm hit.

00:26

Amy caught video of the storm at her house.

She watched the wrong direction, though.

I got out of the house so infrequently this past month, because of heat and smoke, that two swallowtail caterpillars that Jody was saving for me (a male and a female) eclosed without me.  😢  I am really looking forward to a normal life now.

Jody's swallowtails

Lucy and I finally got outside today. It is a perfect summer day, 75°F, sunny, and low humidity. This is what we are used to in summer. It was a long wait for a day like today. We only were able to photograph one bug and one Cessna flying overhead violating my airspace. Today, I'm going to make a skillet cookie and pizza. I should have no power outages—I lost power six times this past week. I hope the worst is over.

Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris)

The plane.

Here is an interesting article from the Washington Post on Vermont's rain.  

The exceedingly low odds of Vermont’s flooding disaster, visualized

By John Muyskens, Scott Dance and Simon Ducroquet. There may be a paywall for you if you read the Post often.

I found this Tik Tok video of the Barton River. My thanks to Cheryl Garcia for making it. I can tell exactly where the shot was taken on High Bridge Hill.

@cherylgarcia76 Rte 5, north of Barton, VT. #vermont #flooding ♬ original sound - Cheryl Garcia

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