Warming temperatures and rain have prompted meteorologists at the National Weather Service to warn of an increased risk of ice jams and mild river flooding in various locations around Vermont.
Rain and temperatures in the high 40s and low 50s Wednesday were expected to accompany widespread rainstorms, creating “the potential for some snowmelt to occur and some breakage of some of the ice that’s built up in the rivers,” Jessica Storm, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington, said Wednesday afternoon.
Storm said the agency is not currently expecting widespread impacts from ice jams or flooding.
“We don’t have anything like a flood watch out at this moment,” she said. “We are just letting people know to use caution around these waterways.”
She expected that some rivers would rise but would likely remain below flood stage, and she said the risk was highest for the Otter Creek in Rutland and the Mad River in Moretown.
The National Weather Service’s forecast said caution would be most necessary Wednesday evening into Thursday.
Ice jams can occur in frozen rivers when rain and warmer temperatures melt the ice, and when that rain and added snowmelt cause rivers to rise.
Ice that gets trapped by the river banks can “dam the river a little bit,” Storm said, which can cause flooding.
The National Weather Service would issue a warning in the case of an ice jam, Storm said.
The Winooski River seen from River Road in Duxbury and from the Long Trial footbridge between Bolton and Duxbury on Wednesday, March 5. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
