Vermont

Heavy Rain Causes Scattered Vt. Road Damage, Closures

In addition to impacts to roads such as washouts, many power customers also lost service in the storm.

Heavy rain and strong winds brought headaches to many people across Vermont Wednesday night and Thursday.

In Lincoln, the mountainous town's road foreman spent Thursday working to reopen Grimes Road after a washout in a key section. Dave Cavoretto told necn he measured four inches of water in his rain gauge, and some road infrastructure just couldn't withstand a one-two-punch.

"The amount of rain we got in a short period of time that we got it in," Cavoretto said, describing the dual problems that affected his community. "It rained really hard last night, and this morning, things were overwhelmed."

Cavoretto expected to get Grimes Road passable again as his first priority, before moving onto other, smaller repair jobs required after the storm, he said.

Lincoln was just one of the spots in Vermont's Addison County walloped by rain.

In Bristol, the swollen New Haven River swamped the backyard of a property alongside Route 116. Route 116 itself was also impacted, with water flowing across it at a few points.

Runoff from the mountains also chewed away parts of the shoulder of some high-elevation hilly back roads in Bristol, leaving a town crew scrambling to prevent worse damage.

The nearby Middlebury River also spilled over its banks, forcing a handful of temporary road closures in that town.

The combo of saturated ground and wind created hazards for line crews working to get the lights back on for everyone.

More than 30,000 customers in Green Mountain Power's large service territory lost service Wednesday night or Thursday, the utility said.

Late Thursday afternoon, GMP tweeted that it had restored power to more than 25,000 of those customers, and were working on restoring service to the remaining 5,150.

"It's definitely been a challenging storm," said Steve Costello of GMP. "We actually had some crews who had to retreat into their trucks because trees were falling around them as they were working through the night last night, so it was very dangerous conditions."

Back in Lincoln, Cavoretto said it would likely take at least a week to clean up the messes created by this powerful storm.

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