In 2020, ProPublica scored every county in the U.S. for its vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, with lower scores denoting lesser risk. The county the nonprofit news outlet scored the lowest, of roughly 3,100 nationwide? Lamoille County, Vermont.
The report ranked a total of six Vermont counties among the 10 least likely throughout the country to experience extreme heat, dangerous humidity, sea level rise and wildfires, as well as the agricultural damage and other economic impacts associated with climate change. (It did not explicitly tackle freshwater flooding but, rather, based scores on a combination of all those listed threats).
For residents of Lamoille County — and especially those who live near the banks of the Lamoille River — the rankings might seem hard to believe after last month’s floods.
Experts have told VTDigger that, while it’s impossible to blame one unusual weather event on climate change, there is a clear link between increasing temperatures and extreme weather. They also see the flooding as a clear piece of a larger pattern.
“If this is the safest area for climate change, that doesn’t bode well for a lot of other places,” said Seth Jensen, deputy director of the Lamoille County Planning Commission.
The northern Vermont county of about 26,000 had the greatest number of homes, per capita, rendered uninhabitable in the state last month, according to preliminary data reported to Vermont 211. As of July 26, about 180 homes across the county were reportedly uninhabitable — a number that has only increased since, Jensen said.
Much of the county got at least 5 inches of rain over the storm’s first 48 hours, with some areas getting more than 7 inches, according to reports analyzed by the National Weather Service. The Lamoille River, which cuts through the heart of the county, reached record or near-record high levels, cresting well above its major flood stage, the reports show. Portions of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, which snakes along the path of the river, were torn up and destroyed when the waterway jumped its banks.
“It’s just a different world, in terms of the river, than we were thinking about even 20, 30 years ago,” Jensen said. Johnson’s town office building was intentionally built above the floodplain, he noted, but still had at least 8 inches of water on its first floor last month.
Jensen also pointed to a trend officials have observed across Vermont following the storms — that flooding swept through areas with high concentrations of relatively affordable rental housing, a product of where the state’s historic villages were built.
That means on a scale as small as which street in Johnson someone calls home — a far smaller scale, he noted, than what any nationwide survey of climate resilience could reliably capture — the impacts of climate change will vary widely.
“During the storm, if you were up on the hill, outside of a village, (Lamoille County) probably was a pretty safe place,” Jensen said, referring to the ProPublica report.
Standing on Railroad Street in Johnson last month, Jasmine Yuris was surveying the flood damage to the town library, where she’s the facilities manager. Yuris lives up on the hill, near the town’s Vermont State University campus — and pointed out that, while her home was basically untouched by flooding, that was hardly the case in the village.
“It feels like even more of a divide between the haves and the have-nots in Johnson,” she said, “because the vulnerable population now has another challenge — on top of the socioeconomic challenges that already existed before.”
Jensen said the county planning commission has been talking with local towns for years about how officials can better make climate resilience a part of their land use planning, and he hopes the flooding will put a renewed focus on those conversations.
“As part of this recovery, it’s going to be imperative to think about where those safer areas are,” Jensen said, “and how we make sure that those safer areas are affordable for people who currently have no choice but to live in the floodplain.”
