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Many consider the 2011 floods, especially Tropical Storm Irene, to represent an extremely rare event. But upon examination of Vermont's history of flooding, it becomes disturbingly obvious that catastrophic, devastating floods occur frequently in Vermont. Emergency and natural resource agencies know that Irene was not an anomaly.
In fact, Irene was the sixth large-scale flood, with a statistically derived return frequency of once every 100 years, to devastate the southern 2/3 of Vermont in 84 years. This represents an actual frequency of a storm like Irene once every 14 years. From 1973 through 2011, Vermont experienced 25 catastrophic floods, each having nearly equaled, equaled, or exceeded the intensity of damages associated with Tropical Storm Irene, varying only in geographic location and scale.
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