In the end, the storm made more waves in the mountains than it did along the shore.
Before Hurricane Irene’s arrival, there were fears of devastating storm surges along the Eastern Seaboard, from North Carolina to New England. But while its winds did lead to surges that produced tidal flooding, the worst floods were inland, especially in upstate New York and Vermont.
These floods had nothing to do with tides and little to do with wind, experts said. They were mostly about topography and the sheer size of the storm — not its intensity, but its geographical area.
Even though Irene weakened to barely hurricane force on Sunday, it was still an enormous storm, a spiral of warm, wet tropical air more than 500 miles wide. “It had a lot of moisture with it to begin with,” said Dave Radell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y.
When a hurricane hits land, it loses some of its moisture when the colder ground causes condensation and rainfall. That happened when Irene passed over coastal North Carolina on Saturday. But the storm was so big that even while part of it passed over land, much of it was still over water, gathering more moisture, said Frank Marks, director of the hurricane research division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When Irene reached the New York City area, it started to move inland, its winds reduced to tropical storm level, less than 73 miles an hour. Then topography took over.
As the warm, moist air hit the Catskills and other mountains, it was forced upward, what meteorologists call upslope flow. That brought it into an area of higher, colder air that made the tropical air condense, producing heavy rainfall. “The air is forced to rise a bit and that wrings out the moisture,” Mr. Radell said.
It is a common atmospheric effect, often seen in the Rockies. In this case, it was enhanced by westerly winds from the west side of Irene, Mr. Radell said. In the Hudson Valley and Vermont, he said, “we had a good six to eight hours of heavy rainfall.”
And that meant rainfall of up to eight inches in Vermont, according to the National Weather Service office in Burlington. In New York, the most rainfall recorded in the 24 hours that ended Monday morning was more than eight and a half inches in Delanson, west of Schenectady.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy