click to enlarge - Abigail Sylvor Greenberg ©️ Seven Days
- Waitsfield residents at the Round Up
Waitsfield residents gathered beside the covered bridge over the Mad River for the town’s weekly outdoor Round Up on Wednesday evening. Run by riverside restaurant the Sweet Spot, the event was a good-natured kickback.
DJ Xav Wav spun crowd-pleasers such as “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on vinyl, and families fanned out with paper plates piled high with Dino Bones BBQ pulled pork. People settled along the babbling Mad River, which remained at safe levels even as rivers and streams not far away stubbornly remained at flood stage.
Some residents of nearby Waterbury spent Wednesday rescuing belongings from their basements. And in Montpelier, volunteers and contractors swept water and mud out of downtown shops and piled ruined items on curbs.
Why did Waitsfield fare better?
Burlington-based National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Clay had a simple explanation when
Seven Days posed the question to him on Thursday:
“It just depends on where the rain falls.”
When heavy rainfall occurs, the water in a river basin drains into streams and rivers, causing them spill their banks and flood surrounding areas. “A lot of times,” Clay said, “the Mad River will flood first.” When deluges hit early this week, though, “the heaviest rainfall fell just outside of the basin that feeds the Mad River," he explained, "and all the water went into the Winooski.”
In essence, a town’s fate in flash flood conditions is really “luck of the draw,” Clay said. click to enlarge - Abigail Sylvor Greenberg ©️ Seven Days
- The Mad River on Wednesday
That means where rivers overflow varies from one extreme weather event to the next. In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene devastated the Mad River Valley, including Waitsfield, leading to evacuations and damaged buildings, as well as the temporary closure of the covered bridge at the spot where the Round Up is held.
“Irene was to us what this storm is to Montpelier,” Sarina Gulisano of the Sweet Spot said. Gulisano and other Waitsfield business owners were grateful to have been spared.
Not everyone at the Round Up had been shielded from the flood’s devastation. The DJ, whose offstage name is Xavier Jimenez, owns a shop in Montpelier, Buch Spieler Records, which had flooded.
“When I set up next to the river, the feeling [was] hard to articulate,” Jimenez later told Seven Days, adding “I was feeling tender for sure.” He described getting emotional as he spun records in “life-as normal Waitsfield.”
“So much… like my town, my business, gone,” he reflected.
Another vendor, Union Brook Farm, had also been hit. As they hawked rice bowls and chicken sandwiches, Union Brook farmers also collected tips to benefit the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s VT Farmer Emergency Fund.
Brian Lewis, who owns restaurants across the state, was thankful that his Waitsfield property, the Great Eddy, was “bone dry.” He anticipated flood-related repairs on his new restaurant that has yet to open in Montpelier.
Charlie Menard, who owns Canteen Creemee on Waitsfield’s Main Street, said the worst consequences his business has experienced from the storm are delivery delays and slow trash pickup.
“We dodged a bullet,” Menard said. “It’s just a miracle.”
Editor's note: This headline was changed on July 18, 2023 after reader complaints that a previous one was insensitive.