hydrology

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Water!

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Editors Note

Hydrology is the study of water. Typically held within the confines of science, the

study of water need not be bound by factual understanding, but may be under-

stood through artistic interpretation.

All water has at some point touched. It is connective, not just a link between rivers

and oceans, but also between ways of understanding the world.

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Fig. 1: Library Stencil

Hydrology was hidden in a library. Placed between the covers of books, it can only

be found by embarking on a quest. Call numbers imprinted on sidewalks indicate

it’s location, but the numbers remain invisible without water. Upon first rain the num-

bers materialize, a direct but mysterious lead. If the clues are followed and Hydrolo-

gy found, the searcher is rewarded. Rewarded with images and words and thoughts.

Rewarded with glowing accomplishment from a successful pursuit. Rewarded with

curiosity and desire to dig further. And when Hydrology is returned to the shelves,

the searcher is rewarded by knowing its still there, unconsumed and available to

anyone willing to explore.

If you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out

and sent rambling…You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and

let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the

next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like

perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling

match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolish-

ness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine

stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every

day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

- Ray Bradbury

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C O N T E N T S

Illustrated History of Flooding in Vermont

KATE LEIB

Reading List

Vessels

ADAM KAMINSKY

Float

YVONNE CHAN

Endocrine Disruptors

HANNAH GELDERMANN

Waterfront

SAGE TABER

Ceramics

MATT WITKIN

Water Vignettes

JENNY MOFFETT

Cryptozoology on Lake Champlain

ADAM KAMINSKY

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matt photojenny text

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matt photojenny text

1625

Yvonne1

1726

Yvonne 2

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Burlington Waterfront

A BRIEF ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF

FLOODING IN VERMONT

If you walk down the rocky bank of a riverbed, you might notice that the larger, seemingly immovable boulders are likely speckled with semi-circular dents. These percussion marks, as they’re classified by geologists, indicate a very sudden and high magnitude type of impact abrasion typically associated with catastrophic floods. Though it may be hard to envision, these marks are geomorphic proof that at some point in a boulder’s lifetime, it was toppled down the riverbed by a large volume of flowing water, it’s surface scraping and crashing against the bed of smaller pebbles along the way. The Vermont landscape has undoubtedly experienced many such catastroph-ic floods over the course of the earth’s history, but how many of them are actually recorded?

According to a 1964 Geological Survey on Historical Floods in New England, only one reference could be found that pointed to flooding in the area prior to 1620; a Native American story of a great flood that drowned the land and all its creatures save for an Indian man and woman and a hare who took refuge in the White Mountains. Which is not to say flooding did not occur prior to colonial contact. Perhaps the most significant Vermont flood one can definitively point to occurred at the end of the last ice age when a glacial ice dam melted at the northern shores of Lake Vermont, allowing sea water from the Atlantic Ocean to flood the region forming what we now know as the Champlain Sea. After thousands of years of gradual isostatic rebound, the landscape rose above sea level, closing off the connection between the Atlantic Ocean and the Champlain Sea, and subsequently forming what is modern day Lake Champlain, an elogated freshwater lake that straddles the Vermont/New York border and reaches across the Canadian border in its Northernmost section. Vermont’s more recent history is defined not by the lake’s flooding but more the state’s many rivers swelling with snow-melt and heavy rainfall characteristic of the New England Region. But even in the years following 1620 records of flood-ing are sparse or hard to interpret. Up until the early 20th century the impact of flooding events was most often measured in a relative manner. That is, a flood was described with reference to destruction or extent of previous floods of note in the same area.

For example, “the flood of 1880 was said to be three feet higher than the flood of 1860.” Thus, the definitive authority on flooding in any given Vermont town was its oldest resident--someone who had seen or been told of past flooding events by their relatives. That is until the flood of 1927, Vermont’s best documented historical flooding event. At the time, the flood of November 1927 was the worst in recorded history, rivaled only now by the mass flooding that occurred in 2012 during Hurricane Irene. Though oral histories remain one of the most powerful methods of communicating disaster on a personal level, the 1927 flood was the first with abundant visual evidence in the form of photographs. On the following pages we hope to provide a visualization to accom-pany the carefully collected oral history of flooding in Vermont. We can’t help but associate floods with their immediate capability to affect us through damage and destruction--their ability to remind us that our structures are not as permanent as we think. In destroying highways, bridges, homes, and entire towns, floods remind us that we still live inside an ecosystem as much as we intentially or unintentially distance ourselves from it. After all, the Champlain Valley’s fertile soils and agrarian landscape owes itself to the fact that Vermont was 40% underwater following the Ice Age. We also associate flooding with resilience. Resilience not only of the flooded landscape but also of its inhabitants.

Wantastiquet Mountain

Connecticut River

BrattleboroBrattleboro, 1770

“The island opposite this village was underwater.”

Saxtons River, March 25, 1826

“On Saxtons River we learn that seven bridges have been swept away, one paper mill, one grist-mill, and one dye house”

Sleepers River, September 5, 1828

“The violence of the waters was so great that a clothier’s screwpress weighing 400 pounds was swept downstream and lodged on the meadow nearby half a mile below.”

White River in Bethel, July 1830

“The flood took bridges crops mills and all in its way. In the narrowest parts of the valley of the branch, the water was 20 feet deep.”

Connecticut River, April 24, 1850

“The oldest inhabitant of Wells River remembers 123floods in 1828, 1821, and even 1806 but he remem-bers nothing approximating so nearly the great deluge as we now witness.”

floor”

BRATTLEBORO

White River, February 10, 1867“West Hartford was inundated as a whole body of ice suddenly checked, forming a dam which caused the water to set back to such an extent that in less than 20 minutes thereafter. 16 house in this village were submerged above the first floor.”

Saxby’s Gale, October 3 - 5, 1869Prior to the flood, the Williams River flowed around a bend and powered the paper mills in Bartonsville. After days of torrential rains, the river jumped the banks and took the shortest path of resistance and went straight through the center of the village. Six homes, the brand new train depot, and a large section of the railroad tracks were washed away”

The bridge that was built after the 1969 storm withstood the flood of 1927 but did not survive Hurricane Irene in 2011.

Other reported flooded areas include towns along the Connecticut, Wells,West, White, Black, Passumpsic, Ompompanoosuc, Ottauquechee River, and Saxtons River.

Sleepers River, September 5, 1897

“At Noon, July 24, looking up North Danville road, one saw a wide lake of water; broken bridges, dams, logs, and other debris swept down upon the highway bridge. There was liability of a repetition of the flood of 1869”.

The Great Flood of 1913, March 28

This flood affected over 20 states in the midwestern and eastern US. In Vermont “Intense rains from the great Ohio Valley storm fell on frozen ground.” Upper Connecticut, Ottauquechee, White, and Passumpic Rivers were particularly flooded.

Vermont, November 2 - 4, 1927

Most severe flood recorded in Vermont State history. with 5-10 inches of rainfall, 84 deaths, and $35 million in damages. 1927’s flood broke a 58 year old record, measuring in four feet higher than the 1869 flood on average.

“The Main street at St. Johnsbury Center is about 15 feet under water. The water is 10 feet high on the walls of the Green Mountain Grange building”

Vermont, March 11, 1936

The Great New England Flood of 1936 caused two floods in Vermont; the first was due to rains and snowmelt, and the second due to intense rainfall. In Vernon, VT the dam broke during despite intense sandbagging efforts.

New England Hurricane, Sept. 21, 1938

Until Hurricane Irene in 2011 (which had weakened to a tropical storm by the time it struck Vermont), the 1938 hurricane was the only tropical cyclone to make a direct hit on Vermont in its recorded history, and it remains the only one known to have struck Vermont as a hurricane. Deaths: 1 in Vermont; 700 in New England. Damage: $400 million across New England

Batten Kill, January 1, 1949

As much as 10 inches of rainfall and mass snowmelt caused flooding in southern areas of Vermont.

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North-Central Vermont, June 1, 1952

Ten days of periodic rainfall across Winooski River Basin and Passumpsic River and surrounding areas culminated in am intense downpour. Some families were evacuated.

Northeast/South Vermont, June 28, 1973

According to National Weather Sevice this severe flood was likely the worst in the 73-year period between the Great Flood of 1927 and Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Three deaths, innumerable crop losses and $64 million dollars of damage resulted in VT.

Vermont, August 9-10, 1976

Hurricane Belle brought intense rains causing subsequent flooding.

Northwest Vermont, April 18, 1982

Severe flooding of Missisquoi & Lamoille Rivers caused by snowmelt and moderate rains.

Central VT & Winooski, July 6, 1984

In Williston, VT a heavy downpour burst a beaver dam in and a torrent of water dereailed an Amtrack train resulting in 5 deaths. Damage in Vermont: $16.5 million.

FLOODS AFTER 1985

The ways in which historical records are written,

kept, and highlighted over time is constantly changing

based on the technology available and the culture at the

time. Thus, we must acknowledge that even the floods

rerecorded and illustrated on the previous pages cannot

represent the full extent of all flooding events that have

occurred in Vermont. In the decades following

Vermont’s massive 1927 flood, the state’s primary meth-

ods of flood documentation shifted from a heavy

reliance on oral histories to favor reports that measured

damage in lives lost, buildings damaged, and money

spent on recovery efforts. With each passing decade the

narrative of flooding became homeogenized: # deaths,

the extent of damage, and however many million it took

to clean up the mess.

The 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s run rather dry

when it comes to the collection of personal anecdotes,

and yet the official documentation of floods increases

during these period thanks to government organizations

such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

However, in 2011 the statewide destruction left in Hurri-

cane Irene’s wake prompted an influx of personal docu-

mentations of the catastrophic flooding via Youtube

videos, blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. The abundance

and accessability of these oral histories has never before

been matched by any flood event in Vermont.

August 4-5, 1989

Severe storms, flooding.

September 16-21, 1999

Hurricane Floyd hits Vermont with catastrophic effects, including one

death. In Weathersfield, VT parts of U.S. Route 5 were washed away.

July 4, 1990

Flooding, severe storm.

March 11, 1992

Flooding, heavy rain, ice jams.

Spring 1993

Flooding, heavy rain, snowmelt.

August 4-6, 1995

Heavy rain, flooding.

January 19 - February 2, 1996

Storms and flooding.

June 12-14, 1996

Flooding.July 15-17, 1997

Excessive Rainfall, High Winds, Flooding

June 17, 1998 to August 17, 1998

Severe storms and flooding.

July 14-18, 2000

Severe storms

and flooding

June 5-13, 2002


June 21 - August 18, 2003


August 12 - September 12, 2004


June 9, 2015

Severe storm and flooding.

April 15-18, 2014


Disasters since 2010: 12




June 25 - July 13, 2013


May 22-26, 2013

Severe storms and flooding

May 20, 2011

Severe storms and flooding

August 27 - September 2, 2011

Though Irene was reduced to a

tropical storm by the time it

reached Vermont’s borders, the

storm caused enough damage

to be forever rembered as

a hurricane, if not the

worst hurricane in

Vermont history.

May 26-27, 2011


April 23 - May 9, 2011


July 21 - August 12, 2008


July 18, 2008

Severe storms, a tornado, and flooding

June 14-17, 2008


April 15-21, 2007


Below is a photo of

a makeshift walk-

ing bridge that

allowed access

to Route 100 in

the aftermath of

Hurricane Irene

M

ORE FLO

ODING THAN USUAL?

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page 1

39

GUIDANCE

Professor Rebecca Kneale Gould

Diane Munroe

EDITORS

Adam Kaminsky

Kate Leib

Sage Taber

Yvonne Chan

CONTRIBUTERS

Yvonne Chan

Tim Giarusso

Hannah Geldermann

Adam Kaminsky

Kate Leib

Jenny Moffett

Mike Moss

Sage Taber

Matt Witkin

SPECIAL THANKS

Burlington City Arts

Ashley Jimenez

DJ Hellerman

Al Larsen

Sean Clute

Cami Davis

Rachel Moore

Middlebury Facilities

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