Monday’s stormy weather was a cut above the usual rain storms that pass over the Vineyard in November. There was lightning and thunder and for a while leaves flying through the air carried by gusty winds. More blinding was the significant rain, almost three inches.

The National Weather Service cooperative station in Edgartown recorded 2.83 inches of rain for the storm. More than an inch of rain fell in a short time from 6 p.m. to after 7 p.m. It is quite rare that a storm will deliver an inch of rain in an hour on the Vineyard. Though there have been rainstorms in the past with this intensity, they are short-lived.

In downtown Vineyard Haven, a wind gust of 45 m.p.h. from the south was clocked at the height of the storm. Within an hour the worst of the wind abated.

Overall, November has been wet. Total rainfall so far this month is 6.04 inches, well above the month’s average of 4.32 inches.

Waxing Moon and Mars

A thin crescent moon appears low in the southwestern sky on Tuesday night, not far from the dull red planet Mars. The two are in the constellation Sagittarius, one of the southernmost constellations in the zodiac. The moon is waxing, three days old.