Ten days before Irene flooded Vermont, Governor Peter Shumlin stood in front of reporters at a press conference, to prepare the state for future flooding along Lake Champlain.
"There's not question we are moving toward a wetter climate in Vermont," said Shumlin on the 18th of August.
After Irene, his stance on the climate hasn't changed.
"I think that there's no question that a warmer planet, is resulting in what most objective scientists have predicted; larger quantities of rain, being delivered to Vermont, in more intense doses that I knew as a kid and most Vermonters knew growing up here," explains Shumlin on September 26.
"I think there's no question that as we move forward, we have to see Irene and the storms of April and May as a harbor for what's ahead for us, an example for what's ahead."
At UVM, the State Climatologist Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, is still combing through the data from pre and post Irene, "Irene was, interesting."
"I think it's a little bit too early right now to point a finger and say this is definitely a climate change signal or a global warming signal," says Dupigny-Giroux. She continues, "There's still a lot of work to be done before we can get to that point and say that definitively."
For instance, the ground was already pretty saturated before Irene. Dupigny-Giroux notes two rain storms prior to Irene and it didn't take much to start the flooding.
"When Irene came through on the 28th of August, it only took a few inches of rain to cause those streams that were near their banks to go into a catastrophic flooding."
Dupigny-Giroux is still studying Irene's impacts. She says a definitive yes or no to climate change storms could come within five years.
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