Irene and Lee

This not so charming couple caused record breaking flooding inland in the Mohawk and Schoharie valleys of New York state and trashed much of southern Vermont and the Susquehanna Valley from New York into Pennsylvania before leaving. Irene was bad, unfortunately Lee came through a week latrer and doubled down the damages. It is taking some time to get a gauge of the full impact.

The water was particularly unkind to the major roads through villages in Greene, Montgomery and Schenectady counties and places like Wilmington Vermont. Some villages have condemned signs on the dangling front doors of a third of the properties along their main street. Places that have not flooded in many decades found themselves under 10 feet of water, and places that usually just flood turned into violent, brown rapids.

Lee spawned a small tornado or two as well, one of which was filmed crossing the NYS Thruway near Amsterdam by a panicked young woman sat in her car. The other, a probable but short-lived tornado near Glenville, landed near the therapeutic riding bar. Happily that didn't so more than scare the heck out of the horses for a moment - but stall guards all held and the horses got some extra hay to help calm their nerves as the storm abated.

Farms have had all of their crop fields destroyed, hitting the final crop of hay that was to keep their horses and cattle in feed over the winter. Of course estimates are that there are over 2000 cows that got caught in the rising waters in the Schoharie Valley alone, smaller farmers losing half their herd, and tragic stories such as the horse breeder who failed to heed warnings to move 21 broodmares and colts to higher ground. Smaller animals like pigs got caught with no recourse. There will be fewer mouths to feed this year. But the hay that has been going from this area to Texas, because of the drought there, has stopped moving.

Share farms like the one to which we belong lost some or all of their crop fields holding the harvest that should have made for bulging, heavy boxes of produce we get in this harvest season. Many CSA's like ours are managing to supply something in a box each week, but the owners are probably raiding their own winter food to do that. The dollar value of the losses is significant for operations that barely stay above water to start with. There is talk of some kind of targeted aid for farmers from our elected representatives.

Locks 8 through 11 on the Mohawk, on the Canal, are down until spring with damaged flood walls, power stations out and the river cutting a new channel beside the lock itself.

Our house never had the water nearer than a couple of blocks away. We were quite lucky.