SUTTON, Vt. — Communities in rural parts of Vermont on Friday woke up once again to damaged homes and washed-out roads due to heavy rainfall and flash flooding, making it the third consecutive summer that severe floods have inundated parts of the state.

Up to 5 inches of rain fell in just a few hours Thursday, prompting rapid flooding as local waterways began to swell, said Robert Haynes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington office.

Nearly 20 homes were cut off in the small town of Sutton as a local brook quickly rose from its banks and surrounded buildings, Fire Chief Kyle Seymour said. His crews were called out to help rescue people from two homes, which required help from swift-water rescue teams called in from neighboring communities.

“This was an incredibly strong, quick-moving localized heavy water,” Seymour said. “It overwhelmed all of our road culverts, all of our streams, all of our rivers. But the actual weather event lasted three hours, with the bulk of the rain concentrated within one hour.”

— The Associated Press