Hurricane Watch
Will Irene, lumbering up the coast earlier this week, lose her gumption and shrink from landfall as Earl did last Labor day weekend? Or will she gain momentum and pack a wallop the way Bob did two decades ago? As we go to press, the first hurricane to threaten New England this season seemed likely to spare the Vineyard a major disaster. But despite big advances in hurricane tracking over the past 20 years, weather patterns remain just capricious enough to keep the skeptics among us skeptical and the planners preparing for the worst.
Southern New England is overdue for a major hurricane. The last big one, in terms of lives lost, damage and cost, was the Great Hurricane of 1938. A lot has changed since then that will make the next one even more severe.
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.
South Beach in Edgartown was closed to bathing today at noon, due to high surf.
South Beach and all of the beaches on Nantucket will be closed until Monday morning.
The announcement came from Governor Deval L. Patrick at a telephone press conference Friday, as he reported on preparations for Hurricane Bill.
Almost 3,200 buildings on the Vineyard sit on land which could be inundated by the storm surge of a category four hurricane. Even a category one storm would put almost 400 buildings at risk.
The daunting statistics come out of work done by the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, which plotted the location of structures on the Island against so-called SLOSH (Sea, Lake and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The tragedy of the New England hurricane of 1938 was not the loss of nearly 10,000 homes and business along the shore. It was the psychic destruction of summer for an entire generation. Virtually everyone that lived on or near the New England coast was traumatized by the loss of someone or something they loved. People who lived in homes their grandparents built and thought were safe and secure were killed, injured or saw their property destroyed.
