Massachusetts
50+ Massachusetts beaches closed for swimming by Department of Public Health. See where
Ever Wonder What the Beach Flags Mean?
For your safety, learn what the beach flags mean
As we enter the last stretch of summer before school starts, there is no better way spend a day than relaxing at one of the Bay State’s beautiful beaches.
However, the number of closed beaches in Massachusetts keeps getting higher. This weekend, over 50 beaches are closed due to unsafe swimming water.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) states that swimming in the water at these closed beaches poses a threat of illness due to high levels of bacteria. Symptoms can range from nausea and vomiting to a sore throat and fever.
Here’s a full list of closed beaches to avoid when planning your weekend.
What beaches in Massachusetts are currently closed due to bacteria?
The following MA beaches, listed by town, are closed as of Friday, Aug. 16:
- Amherst:
- Puffers Pond (Bacterial Exceedance, Other)
- Stanley St. swimming hole at Cushman Bridge (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Ashby: Damon Pond Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Ashland: Ashland Reservoir Main Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Barnstable:
- Wequaquet Lake Town (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Wequaquet Lake Yacht Club (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Braintree: Smith Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Brewster: Upper Mill Pond (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Concord: Walden Pond (Other)
- Danvers: Sandy Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Dartmouth: Moses Smith Creek (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Framingham: Learned Pond Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Grafton: Silver Lake Beach (Other)
- Harwich: Sand Pond (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Haverhill: Plugs Pond (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Holland: Collette Drive Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Kingston: Gray’s (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Lowell: Merrimac River (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Lynn:
- Kings (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Lynn Shore Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Nahant: Nahant Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Nantucket: Sesachacha Pond (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Natick: Cochituate State Park Beach (Bacterial Exceedance, Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- North Andover:
- Frye Pond Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Stevens Pond (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Northampton: Musante Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Oxford: Carbuncle Pond (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Plymouth: Nelson Park (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Quincy: Norton Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Salem:
- Camp Naumkeag (Other)
- Children’s Island (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Ocean Avenue (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Willow Avenue (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Saugus: Pearce Lake at Breakheart Reservation (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Shutesbury: Lake Wyola (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Springfield: Bass Pond (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Swampscott: Kings (Other)
- Templeton:
- Beamans Pond Campground (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Beamans Pond Day Use (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Townsend: Pearl Hill Pond Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Truro: Longnook (Other)
- Wayland: Wayland Town Beach (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- West Stockbridge: Card Pond Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- West Tisbury: Seth’s Pond (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Westborough: Lake Chauncy Beach (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Westfield: Hampton Ponds Kingsley Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Winchendon: Lake Dennison State Park (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Winchester: Shannon Beach at Upper Mystic (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Winthrop: Halford (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Worcester:
- Indian Lake Public Beach at Sherburne Ave (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
- Lake Quinsigamond-Regatta Point Beach (Bacterial Exceedance)
- Shore Park (Harmful Cyanobacteria Bloom)
Most beaches are closed due to bacterial exceedance, meaning the levels of bacteria in the water are higher than the limits set by the MDPH.
Those in the “other” category can be closed due to a variety of chemical or physical hazards, such as riptides and poor visibility.
Beach weather this weekend: AccuWeather warning about rip currents developing this weekend from storm off coast
When will beaches in Massachusetts re-open?
According to the MDPH website, beaches can only re-open when their bacteria levels are back within the safe range, so there is no set amount of time for a closure.
The status of a closed beach can be checked on the website’s water quality dashboard, which is updated at 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. daily.
National Hurricane Center cautioning beachgoers in the Atlantic
Forecasters are warning beachgoers about possible “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions” this weekend because of Hurricane Ernesto. The storm is not predicted to make landfall in New England.
“Even if Ernesto stays well offshore of the U.S. East Coast, beach goers should be aware of a significant risk of deadly rip currents beginning later this week,” the National Hurricane Center said earlier this week.
Riptides or rip currents are powerful currents of water that can pull people away from shore, according to the National Weather Service. They can be deadly: data from the NWS shows rip currents have killed almost 30 people this year alone.
If caught in a rip current, the NWS says to yell for help and remain calm and stay afloat while waiting for help. Do not swim directly against a riptide, rather swim parallel to the shore.
Melina Khan contributed to this report.
SIMSBURY, Conn. (WTNH) — A Massachusetts woman was arrested Wednesday and charged with DUI after a crash in Simsbury, according to police.
The crash happened at around 2:15 p.m. on Hartford Avenue and Elm Street. Police responded to reports that one of the operators of the vehicles was unconscious, later becoming conscious.
Upon arrival, police found that operator, who was identified as 39-year-old Allison Beu of Southwick, Massachusetts, outside of her vehicle and interacting with the other involved parties.
The two occupants in the other vehicle were not transported to the hospital.
Beu was charged with DUI and failure to drive in proper lane.
BOSTON (WWLP) – Following the shooting at Brown University, claiming the lives of two students and injuring nine others, Governor Healey is joining calls for anyone with information to contact authorities.
Police have not yet made any arrests in connection with the shooting, but they have released footage of a person of interest, calling on the public for help.
“At this time, we just have to encourage anyone in the public who may know something, see something, to immediately contact law enforcement,” said Healey.
Governor Healey says the Massachusetts State Police are in Rhode Island to assist with the investigation. The governor also spoke to mounting fear on college campuses, as the number of mass shootings in the United States exceeds the number of days so far in the year.
“In speaking with many of them, I know that they are taking all measures to ensure the safety of students and faculty, and certainly as a state we will do everything that we can to support those efforts,” said Governor Healey.
Local to western Massachusetts, UMass Amherst told 22News about their campus safety plans, which include adding emergency preparedness to student orientation and hosting optional active threat training for students, staff, and faculty.
The FBI is offering an award of up to $50,000 leading to an arrest and conviction. Anyone who thinks they may have information is encouraged to call the Providence Police.
Local News Headlines
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Download the 22News Plus app on your TV to watch live-streaming newscasts and video on demand.
Massachusetts
This week’s jobs report was messy, but it shows cracks in the economy as 2026 looms – The Boston Globe
“We anticipated that once the government reopened there would be a few months of noisy data, and we would not get a real sense of where the jobs market is until early 2026. That is exactly what we got,” Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at corporate advisory firm RSM, wrote in a blog post.
Despite potential statistical distortions from the shutdown, the report underscored that private employers remained stuck in low-fire, low-hire mode in October and November, while unemployment reached the highest rate in four years. Wage growth has stalled.
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week, with most officials saying they were more worried about the job market falling apart than inflation heating up. Tuesday’s payroll numbers show their concerns weren’t unfounded:
- The private sector added an average of 60,500 jobs in the past two months, extending a mostly anemic run of hiring, while the federal workforce declined by 168,000 as DOGE-related deferred resignations took effect.
- The jobless rate crept up to 4.6 percent in November from 4.4 percent in September. (The Labor Department didn’t tally unemployment in October due to the 43-day shutdown.)
- The number of people working part time because of economic conditions increased by more than 1 million, or 24 percent, over the past year.
“The labor market is showing growing fragility as firms grapple with uneven demand, elevated costs, [profit] margin pressure and persistent uncertainty,” economists Gregory Daco and Lydia Boussour said in note.
Here are some job trends I’ll be watching as we move into the new year.
Just a few sectors are in hiring mode.
The economy is vulnerable to a downturn when job growth is limited to a few sectors.
Health care and social assistance accounted for most of the new jobs in November, with a smaller gain in construction.
The economically sensitive manufacturing and transportation-warehousing industries lost jobs, as did information and finance, two largely white-collar sectors that are important employers in Massachusetts. (State-level data for November will be published later this month.)
Layoffs are low but will that last?
Employers are moving cautiously as they assess the impact of tariffs on their businesses, the direction of consumer spending, and whether artificial intelligence might allow them to operate with fewer workers.
Because the slowdown in hiring has yet to turn into a wave of firing, unemployment is relatively low by historical standards even after recent increases.
But there are concerning signs.
- The unemployment rate among Black workers climbed to 8.3 percent last month from 6.4 percent a year earlier even as white unemployment was little changed. Black workers are often hit first when hiring slows or layoffs begin.
- Similarly, the jobless rate for workers without a high school diploma has risen to 6.8 percent from 6 percent over the past year, and unemployment among 20-24 year olds is at its highest level (excluding the COVID shock) since 2015, the tail end of the long “jobless recovery” that followed the Great Recession.
Slack is building in the labor market.
The supply of workers is growing — surprising some economists who expected a decline amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and aggressive deportation campaign.
With hiring on the decline, many people are idle or not working as many hours as they would like.
The U-6 unemployment rate — a measure of labor-market slack that counts not only the officially unemployed, but also discouraged workers who’ve stopped looking and people stuck in part-time jobs who want full-time work — jumped to 8.7 percent in November from 8 percent in September. That’s the highest rate since early 2017 (excluding the COVID era).
How does the Fed react?
Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the central bank’s quarter-point cut, plus two others since September, should be enough to shore up hiring while allowing inflation to resume falling toward officials’ 2 percent target.
Most Fed watchers don’t think the latest jobs report alters that view — for now — and are forecasting just two more rate cuts in 2026.
“The report contains enough softness to justify prior rate cuts, but it offers little support for significantly deeper easing ahead,” Kevin O’Neil at Brandywine Global, told Bloomberg.
Final thought
Massachusetts, which has been shedding jobs this year, seems to be leading the way for the rest of the country.
Call me cautiously pessimistic: Things will get worse before they get better.
Larry Edelman can be reached at larry.edelman@globe.com.
Former Montana Heritage Commission director sentenced in embezzlement scheme
Husker Fans flock to NCAA Volleyball final four despite no Nebraska
California school district near Nevada caught up in a dispute over transgender athlete policies – WTOP News
Police: Brown Univ. shooting suspect identified, found dead in New Hampshire
White Christmas in the Philadelphia region this year? Cecily Tynan breaks down our chances
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Video: Trump Mocks Obama, Biden in His Presidential ‘Walk of Fame’
Trump quietly signs sweeping $901B defense bill after bipartisan Senate passage
Mercosur signature delayed to January after Meloni asks for more time
Is ISIS making a comeback? : Sources & Methods
Texas Republicans launch ‘Sharia Free America Caucus’ aimed at defending ‘Western civilization’
-
Iowa4 days agoAddy Brown motivated to step up in Audi Crooks’ absence vs. UNI
-
Washington1 week agoLIVE UPDATES: Mudslide, road closures across Western Washington
-
Iowa6 days agoHow much snow did Iowa get? See Iowa’s latest snowfall totals
-
Maine2 days agoElementary-aged student killed in school bus crash in southern Maine
-
Maryland4 days agoFrigid temperatures to start the week in Maryland
-
Technology1 week agoThe Game Awards are losing their luster
-
South Dakota5 days agoNature: Snow in South Dakota
-
Nebraska1 week agoNebraska lands commitment from DL Jayden Travers adding to early Top 5 recruiting class