Happy 35th birthday to the Chappaquiddick Community Center! See the CCC website for ways to help the center in years to come. The next potluck at the center will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. Yoga Jay will be held on Sundays from 8:30 to 9:45 a.m.

We’ve had a parade of storms come through during the past month. One of them encouraged the Wasque breach to close up prematurely. Without a breach to let the water leak out of Katama Bay, the Edgartown waterfront is once again flooding.

On Wednesday morning, winter storm Finn passed over the islands. Even at low tide that morning, water was half a foot deep at the Chappy Ferry ramp. With the rising tide, sea water rose up into the ferry house to a depth of several inches. Then the harbor looked like a river as the water gushed out, only to bounce back up minutes later to an even greater depth.

The ferry captain couldn’t guarantee a return trip for the school bus driver, so Chappy schoolchildren got the day off on Wednesday. It was a half-day anyway but nonetheless that would certainly have brought me boundless joy when I was a kid.

The deepest that I’ve seen the storm flooding since taking on the ferry operation has been just short of a foot inside the ferry house. But I recall a Thanksgiving Day gale in the early 1960s when the water nearly reached the windowsills.

Climate change and sea level rise have certainly increased the frequency of coastal flooding here, but in my experience, the extreme highs have always occurred.