By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
HART’S LOCATION – There is no easy way around it.
Torrential rain that fell across the state Monday – in some cases more than four inches in a few hours – caused road damage but none worse than the lengthy detour now forced around Crawford Notch which is cut off as an East-West road for at least a week.
Drivers will have to detour around the mountains, going through Pinkham Notch instead to the North or the Kancamagus Highway to the south to reach destinations.
And ski areas, which suffered damage in some cases as well as losing much of their snow pack, are rallying to get their trails open in time for the potentially lucrative Christmas holiday week, thanks to some cold temperatures predicted in the upcoming overnights.
On Thursday morning, Gov. Chris Sununu and Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director Robert Buxton toured storm damage incurred during this week’s weather event near the Arethusa Falls Trailhead Parking Area in Hart’s Location.
This came after William Cass, commissioner of the Department of Transportation briefed the state’s Executive Council Wednesday on the extent of damage, mostly to roads and road shoulders which he said was statewide.
Meeting with the press in his office after the council meeting, Sununu said that he became concerned at first when he heard of the high volume of rain being experienced, but the state’s dam system worked as it should despite being put into repeated stress situations from rain events.
He said that there has been a lot of federal investment in roads to become more resilient to these recurring events since the storms in Alstead in 2005 and following Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
Due to the road closures, media was invited to attend the inspection but told to enter with their flashing lights on in their cars near Crawford Notch through Twin Mountain in the Town of Carroll.
There is now a road closure barricade along Route 302.
NOTE: Video of this morning’s news conference can be viewed here.
During the height of the storm Monday, there were more than 60 road closures, Cass said, but it was down to about 13 road closures and a few partial closures as of Wednesday morning.
Mostly, he said, it was due to water crossing the roads and damaging the infrastructure.
“It affected a lot of shoulder and ditch washouts. There weren’t any full road washouts,” Cass said. “We did have a little bit of trouble on a couple of culverts and one bridge in Hart’s Location on Route 302 which is going to be an extended closure, probably about a week to fix that,” he said. “Repairs are underway, detour signs are going up today and will impact traffic,” particularly in Gorham.
“A lot of water, a lot of work,” he said. “Statewide, District 3 and District 1 in the North Country got particularly hit but every District,” was impacted, Cass said.
In his office, Sununu said he was in Concord all day Monday monitoring the storm, the impacts and the response.
“Around 1 p.m. or so, we were getting direct reports where people in various points of the state were telling me ‘hey we are hitting the point, our rivers, our flood levels are hitting the point that we saw peak at Irene,'” he said referring to the 2011 Tropical Storm which caused extensive damage.
“So I got very concerned that the next four or five hours were going to be even worse. Luckily, the storm really picked up speed. The only good news of the storm, especially in the afternoon, was that it really moved quickly. It was a fast-moving storm that got out of here so we did get significantly beyond those Irene (water) levels – those are really bad levels by the way – so I was very concerned it was going to get worse throughout the day. Luckily it pretty much held…and the good news is it really ran off,” Sununu said.
He said the fact there was frozen ground was a factor.
“It acted like concrete” and the water was rushing off and not seeping in.
“That means that the water levels were going to be high, fast, intense but probably also recede pretty quickly too, and that’s exactly what happened” the governor said.
He said for him it is all “about the pieces that are responding and I think for the most part they responded very well.”
He noted that the shelters were open and used, and that most people have returned home as the water levels have receded. Sununu noted that four people were able to be rescued by the National Guard Blackhawk helicopter in Conway and swift boat rescues on the Saco were successful.
“It was statewide. The areas on the western part of the state that typically get hit hardest in storms like this, were saturated. There was some flooding, of course but the bulk of the flooding, though in this case, was more the Jackson-Route 302 area,” Sununu said.
The water really escalated in front of the Mount Washington Hotel in Carroll, he said but it quickly receded.
An educated engineer, Sununu said the most important thing he can do is see the damage – not during the storm but after – so that is why he said he was going north.
Sununu said the Alstead flooding in October, 2005 was bad and he said former Gov. John Lynch “did a good job” and there has been a lot of rebuilding of infrastructure not only in that area but statewide, with the help of some federal American Rescue Plan Act funding that infrastructure has been improved.
Sununu said largely, the dams “acted as they are supposed to” to hold water back.
“But I think, again, as those waters recede you have got to go back to see what scouring might have been done, what back pressures were brought. Every dam is going to be a little bit different.”
The Federal Emergency Management Act limits funding on expanding the sizes of culverts, but the department gets creative to find ways to improve existing infrastructure to meet the needs for more of these major weather events, Sununu noted.
At the ski areas, many of which closed on Monday and in some cases Tuesday in the areas hardest hit, their efforts are underway now to make more snow in the cold temperatures and they have reopened.
Attitash in Bartlett was among one of the hardest hit and the trail connecting the Attitash Base to Bear Peak, which crosses a mountain stream, is now closed with shuttle service being offered to link the two areas together. Eight trails and four lifts were open Thursday.
Nearby, though now isolated from each other by the Route 302 road closure is Bretton Woods which reported a three-foot sustained base of snow.
Craig Clemmer, spokesman for the Omni Mount Washington Resort, which owns Bretton Woods, said, “It’s calm after the storm as blue skies, sunshine and snowmaking have returned to Bretton Woods.”
He said the snowmaking team “has cranked up the guns and is cranking out the snow for a fresh top to bottom blanket of white,” on 15 trails and 5 lifts, “with more terrain opening as we gear up for the holiday week.”
New Hampshire ski conditions can be found at SkiNH: https://www.skinh.com/conditions