Hurricane Edouard was an old storm. By the time the violent winds reached our waters, they had crossed the Atlantic and moved in a straight line up the coast to the Cape and Islands.

 

“We first noticed this storm on August 21. It started as a Cape Verde storm, about 400 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde islands. It formed as a depression with 30-knot winds,” said John Hastings, a meteorologist with Weather Services Corp. in Lexington.

 

Yet, despite all the time meteorologists had to watch, this storm was different. Unlike so many tropical systems that work their way northward, this storm had very weak steering currents. Before it reached Cape Hatteras there were computer models that suggested the storm would head east. Another computer model projected the storm would hit the New Jersey coast.

 

“In the end it stayed around the periphery of a Bermuda high that was located over the Atlantic,” he said. The hardest part for meteorologists was defining where that line on the Bermuda high resided.

 

Another unusual ingredient in this storm was its speed. While making its way up the Atlantic, the storm slowed down to 10 miles per hour. “Usually they tend to speed up. This one didn’t.” A slow-moving storm loses its power more quickly because it remains over cold water longer. Tropical storms are dependent on water temperatures of 79 degrees and higher. Except for the narrow band of warm water that makes up the Gulf Stream, waters south of the Vineyard were in the 60s. These waters took a storm that was a category three, producing sustained winds of 130 miles per hour and dropped it down to sustained winds of 90 m.p.h.

 

“It made us pull our hair out because it kept going north for so long. We knew that if it kept at its northward track we would get hit pretty hard,” Mr. Hastings said.

 

And once the storm arrived in our waters, it took hours to leave. The Vineyard felt the power of this storm for more than 18 hours. Mr. Hastings said in addition to the storm’s slow speed, its final movement eastward left the Island feeling the strength of the storm a good deal longer. “When it started turning northeast, it was equally distant from us for quite a while,” Mr. Hastings said.

 

The highest wind recorded here was 80 miles per hour, recorded at 1:30 p.m. yesterday at Tower Hill in Edgartown. There was an unofficial report of wind reaching 90 m.p.h. on Nantucket. On Monday morning most of the wind gusts were in the 50 m.p.h. range. But by noon, as the storm seemed to slow and head east, the wind gusts rose.

 

Rain was torrential. On Sunday night and early Monday morning, the rain was heavy. Wind-blown rain worked its way into sills, windows and up under shingles. This was the most significant amount of rainfall to fall on the Vineyard in a year. A total of 4.09 inches of rain fell from beginning to end.

 

In the years ahead, Hurricane Edouard will be compared to other passing storms. This storm was not nearly as severe as Hurricane Bob, which passed just west of the Vineyard on August 19, 1991. There are many differences between the two storms.

 

Hurricanes are always far more powerful on the eastern side of the eye. Winds circle the center in a counter-clockwise motion. With Hurricane Edouard, the eastern end of the storm stayed well out to sea.

 

Hurricane Bob was made more powerful because it had a much faster forward speed. Wind speeds are greater when you add the forward speed of the storm to its wind speed. With Hurricane Bob we were not only hit by a storm with a faster forward speed but we were also hit on the eastern end of the storm. In both cases, the cool waters to the south of the Vineyard helped to weaken the storms.

 

Since Hurricane Bob moved quickly, it didn’t spend enough time on those cold waters to be weakened.