Do you ever feel that the weather so perfectly echoes your emotional state -- cloud cover, likelihood of precipitation, even record-shattering events such as last week’s bomb cyclone -- that your psychological health might just as well be charted by your local meteorologist?

No, me neither. That would be crazy.

The phrase “bomb cyclone” was coined in 1980 by an MIT grad student, John R. Gyakum, and his professor, Frederick Sanders. New England already took hurricane season seriously but Gyakum and Sanders were concerned with another kind of storm: explosive cold-weather systems, which cause wild winds, flooding and erosion to coastal areas. A millibar is the standard unit of atmospheric pressure used by the National Weather Service and the definition of a bomb cyclone is a rapidly intensifying storm with a drop of 24 or more millibars in a 24-hour period.

I think it is fair to say that many of us were surprised by last week’s storm. I count on my mother to provide up-the-minute storm coverage in the days preceding a weather event. When no warnings from Julie came by Tuesday, I assumed we were in the clear. Not so!

Now that electricity is restored and the sun is shining, we are left with the loss of a much-loved member of our community. Selectman and civil engineer Kent Healy died at home on Sunday.

I voted for him with pleasure, never having heard anything but the best about the man. I will miss seeing him around town. He was the kind of person whose opinion carried a special gravity, the rare kind of politician whose thinking you trusted, no matter what. His wife Maureen died in May; all we can do is send sympathy and strength to their family and their many friends left behind.

This is the kind of passing that really sets a town back on its heels. People such as Mr. Healy are not replaceable. West Tisbury School’s Mary Boyd said it best: “Let’s all take up his mantle as we move forward.”

Last week, I mentioned the Barn Raisers Ball but here I am, mentioning it again. This extra mention seems frivolous but I really do hope to see you all there on Saturday night. It’s going to be fun. Fifteen dollars a ticket stings a bit, at least for some of us, but it goes to the Agricultural Society.

Don’t forget to turn back those clocks this weekend. This is the easy one: an extra hour in the morning! But then, just like that, it is dark at half past four. Sad trombone.