Weather Basics is the topic of Sail MV's next Zoom talk, March 10, with Brian Whitely of Weather Routing Inc.
Martha’s Vineyard lost a lot of sand from its beaches, a lot of limbs from its trees, and electricity for varying periods, but otherwise came through Hurricane Irene largely unscathed.
The exception was along the south shore, where erosion brought several homes disturbingly closer to the ocean. Chilmark building inspector Leonard Jason confirmed that one house has become precarious.
Wet, windy, warm and sunny are terms to describe weather, and there was plenty of it on the Vineyard in 2010. There was record rainfall. The National Weather Service cooperative station recorded 56.18 inches of precipitation for the year, 10 inches above average.
Yet for all the rain clouds, the Vineyard had one of the sunniest, hot, dry summers in a while. Much of the drama of bad wet weather, or the threat of bad weather, came late in the summer, making the year good for tourism and also fine for the aquifer.
With two weeks left in the 65th annual Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby, fishermen are fretting about the weather, which has been unkind to anglers. Wind — lots of it and from every direction — has been the story of September.
There are 2,400 fishermen registered in the derby. Ask any one of them how they are doing and they will likely talk about the wind — the bad wind from the east, the tough wind last week from the north, and tomorrow the forecast for high, gusty winds from the south.
Derby Number 65
The sea and coastline around the Island have been roughed up by hurricanes and tropical storms this September, beginning last weekend when Earl blew through and again midweek when more tropical disturbances cropped up. The weather has been unstable: thunderstorms crashed down on Edgartown on Wednesday while West Tisbury stayed dry and sunny.
But the forecast calls for weather patterns to settle down by Sunday, just in time for the opening of the sixty-fifth Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.
It was the worst weather year in memory. Summer didn’t arrive until August and there was rainfall, record-breaking rainfall. The Vineyard received, as of Wednesday morning, 53.68 inches of rain in 2009, which is almost eight inches more than its annual average.
The summer of 2009 will be remembered for primarily one thing: rain.
“Summer? It didn’t start until the first week of August,” said James H.K. Norton of Norton Farm in Vineyard Haven. “We had no sun for two months. We planted everything in a timely fashion, but nothing ripened because there wasn’t any sun.”
Island farmers, fishermen and sailors all were affected by the bad weather.
