Regarding JB's post:

Being in this case a rather detached observer, at least in the geographic sense, it seems to me that most of the pre-Irene concern was about areas at or near the coast. There was some note of possible heavy rains, but from what I gathered, the main focus was on storm tides and flooding in low lying coastal areas. I recall much less warning and concern about upland and inland areas.

Since the storm, there has been much written about how predicting storm tracks has become quite accurate, but predicting storm intensity is still not very precise. Also, according to several others on this thread, Vermont sent a significant amount of resources to other states that were thought (pre-storm)to be at much greater risk. Hindsight is always 20/20.

Here's hoping Vermont recovers as quickly and as completely as possible.