New York floods leave one dead, rescue crew race into Vermont after heavy rainfall

livemint.com:

The Associated Press.  On Monday, the US Army Corps of Engineers said they expected two dams to release water overnight, causing ‘severe flooding’ downstream likely to affect multiple towns.  Floods hit Vermont's state capital with Montpelier Town Manager Bill Fraser estimating Monday night that knee-high waters had reached much of downtown and were expected to rise a couple more feet during the night.  “For us, this is far worse than Irene. We got water but it went up and down. There were some basements flooded but it didn’t last long.

We are completely inundated. The water is way, way higher than it ever got during Irene," Fraser said while comparing this flooding to the Montpelier Ice Jams in 1992. According to state emergency officials, there have been no reports of injuries or deaths related to the latest flooding in Vermont.

Roads were closed across the state, including many along the spine of the Green Mountains, AP reported.  Some people canoed their way to the Cavendish Baptist Church in Vermont, which had turned into a shelter. About 30 people waited it out, some of them making cookies for firefighters who were working to evacuate and rescue others. The slow-moving storm reached New England in the morning after hitting parts of New York and Connecticut on Sunday.

Additional downpours in the region raised the potential for flash flooding; rainfall in certain parts of Vermont had exceeded 7 inches ( 18 centimeters), the National Weather Service in Burlington said. One of the worst-hit places was New York’s Hudson Valley, where a woman identified by police as Pamela Nugent, 43, died as she tried to escape her flooded home in the hamlet of Fort Montgomery. The force of the flash flooding dislodged boulders, which