IT'S NOT THE WIND. IT'S THE RAIN.

I've seen complaints that the coverage of Hurricane Irene was so much hype, sometimes because of the absence of any hurricane force winds at any shoreside weather stations.  But the rains and accompanying flooding have been no laughing matter.  Art Woolf at Vermont Tiger compares the damages of this year's storm with those of the 1927 flooding in Vermont.

How big would Irene's economic toll have to be to equal that?   If we just inflate the $28 million by the change in the consumer price index, the 1927 flood's toll was $352 million in 2010 dollars.   But a lot has changed in the last 80 years and simply using the CPI doesn't necessarily capture the full burden of the cost.

When wealth is destroyed, it takes resources to rebuild and replace the damaged physical assets.  Those resources represent a burden to those paying it.  If we measure the burden by how much of our current income we would have to sacrifice to repair or replace those assets, the 1927 flood's cost was the equivalent of $3.1 billion today.

Irene may have done $352 million worth of damages to public infrastructure and private property, but it's unlikely to be $3.1 billion.  The 1927 flood is likely to maintain its place in history as the most costly natural disaster to strike Vermont.

That storm mortally wounded the Woodstock Railroad.  A 1936 flood permanently truncated the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington Railroad within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and rearranged the railroad map of New Hampshire.  Hurricane Diane ended the East Wind service before Labor Day, the horror.

Hurricane Irene has given the Shore Line Trolley Museum an unexpected maintenance bill.

Branford Electric Railway Association photo by Dennis Pacelli.

Both the museum and Trains report that all but three of the museum's cars took salt water into traction motors.

While volunteers had moved the cars to higher ground in advance of Hurricane Irene, water was still able to reach the cars’ traction motors. Museum volunteers will need to inspect each car for damage and repair them as necessary. The process could take several years.

You don't just go to the local hardware store or to a Prius dealer to get repair parts for traction motors that in some cars are approaching 100 years old.