VINALHAVEN — Standing at the toilet early Tuesday morning, Jan. 27, was a little startling. It’s not usually. I’m customarily quite at ease. Anticipating the great relief I am accustomed to experiencing at this time each day I was taken aback briefly and my effort stalled when I realized the water level in the appliance’s basin was advancing toward me at an alarming rate. Before it had reached the rim, however, and to my great — albeit different — relief, it began an equally energetic retreat and then repeated the cycle such that I felt reasonably secure in resuming my business.

From the modest heights of Skin Hill, an intriguingly named granite rise, the standpipe occupies a lofty perch overlooking the village some 60 feet below. The standpipe is the town’s water tower and ultimate source of that precious commodity. The water from our town’s reservoir, some three or four miles away in the island’s interior, is pumped regularly to the standpipe to maintain a dependable level — a huge column of water — which, in turn gravity feeds several hundred of our homes below via an underground delivery system, some of it still functioning well after over a hundred years.

The Jan. 27 storm “historic” storm was such — I wrote in the midst of it — that the gusts of wind screeching sporadically over the top of the tower created wildly irregular water pressure throughout the village.

When winds reach 60 or 70 miles per hour, as they often did the night the storm began to build and continued to do throughout the next day, the vacuum created in that space between the wind and the water within caused the level of that huge column to rise which, in turn, created a lessening of pressure in the town below.

During intermittent windy intermissions the water column subsided and the sudden but brief added weight of the water column falling, just a tiny bit, caused an increase in that pressure down here in my bathroom and elsewhere. As the water column fell the corresponding level in the toilet rose; as the former rose, the latter fell. It was a little disconcerting early that morning, that time of day when faculties, mine anyway, are not at their sharpest.

I don’t know if the storm was “historic” or if weather folk were just hysterical. The latter often seems to beget the former. Within the last two years I’ve seen our own snow removal people standing on Main Street drifts that were above the second story of some of those businesses.

In the 1930s, the snow on Main Street was so deep the townspeople simply tunneled through and strung lights within, rather than try and remove the vast accumulation. Still, perhaps the storm will be found to be truly historic. We’ll have to wait to determine for ourselves. Meanwhile I will approach my customary business in subsequent mornings with less trepidation.   

Phil Cross owns the Tidewater Motel on Vinalhaven.