Massachusetts
Mass. brush fires by the numbers: Over 125 ignited in last week
Massachusetts remains subject to a brush fire warning, the Department of Fire Services said Tuesday, as hundreds of acres burn across the state and a smoky haze continues to hang over many local communities.
Within the past week, 126 separate brush fires have burned a total of 548 acres in Massachusetts, a DFS spokesperson told the State House News Service. That includes the fires that have scorched up to 133 acres in Salem and more than 200 acres in Middleton as of Tuesday morning.
On Monday night, with 47 active burns, DFS issued the brush fire warning which calls on Bay Staters to avoid outdoor cooking and heating; be careful with lawnmowers, leafblowers, and other equipment whose engines can become hot; extinguish cigarettes and other smoking materials in an ashtray with water or sand; and abide by an existing prohibition on open burning through January.
The same cautions remain in place Tuesday, DFS spokesperson Jake Wark told the News Service, as weather conditions have not changed significantly.
“We’re still in dry, breezy weather which will encourage an outdoor fire, and unfortunately help it to spread — often to dangerous sizes,” Wark said.
Smoke continues to blow across the greater Boston area from brush fires in the area, but rain chances Tuesday night should improve conditions. Here’s your First Alert forecast.
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The Salem and Middleton fires, together with other blazes in Wilmington and Canton, have resulted in activations of the statewide Fire Mobilization Plan, Wark said. All four fires have occurred between last Friday and Tuesday.
“It’s a way of organizing firefighting resources and bringing them across the region,” Wark said of the mobilization plan for larger fires, “so we have firefighters from, say, Lexington and Groton going to Salem, so that local and regional firefighters aren’t overwhelmed. They can continue to handle the day-to-day fires in their communities.”
Most of the state is either “abnormally dry” or in a state of moderate drought, according to the most recent maps released last week by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
We’re still on the good side of the forecast today. We’ll see a good supply of sun to start, then the clouds will increase and a few showers will sink down from the north in the afternoon. We still manage to make it near 70. (Yay.)
Tomorrow’s high temperatures, however, comes after midnight tonight — before falling toward Saturday morning. If you think that’s confusing, try explaining the snow that’ll be flying in the higher elevations across New England (with solid accumulation above 4k feet).
Yes, the weather is upside down for late May.
We can blame an intense, compact upper-level pool of cold air that broke loose from a larger pool near the Arctic Circle days ago.
The pattern across North America has dropped it in our laps for a day, with cold, rainy, windy consequences.
Rain, wind and… snow?
This will be a sneaky storm. Early on, there might even be a calm, bright sky (very) early Saturday morning. Then the clouds move in and the wind intensifies from the northeast. Gust will briefly peak at 50+ along the coast (40+ inland).
Rain will mix with snow in northern New England, and perhaps in the highest elevations of southern New Hampshire and central Massachusetts.
This also depends on the intensity of the precipitation. Heavier bursts of rain can drag down colder air aloft, helping the snowflakes make it from cloud base to your home place (if you live above 1k feet).
Ironically, we’re not expecting a deluge from this storm. Most spots keep near a half inch, with higher amounts near an inch in northeast Mass./southern NH.
And then just like that, it’s over. The storm pulls away Saturday evening, the skies clear and we’re back to sun Sunday. Highs recover to near 70 with the slightest chance for a shower late day.
Better chances – and cooler temps – come both Monday and Tuesday.
Will summer ever take hold? We know from past years that June can really struggle. It appears that the start of the month may not live up to expectations. Although we are at least climbing back to the 80s late next week.
Have a good weekend.
The head of the Massachusetts State Police can’t be sued for an alleged program that secretly recorded officers’ phone conversations with civilians and used them to bring criminal charges, the First Circuit said Thursday.
A group of Massachusetts residents filed a putative class against against Superintendent Geoffrey Noble, as well as Motorola and other companies, over the secret recordings, which were used to propose criminal charges in at least 181 cases without prosecutors’ knowledge, the three judge panel said.
The opinion by Circuit Judge Seth Aframe said the residents, led by Jason Courtemanche, failed to show how they’d be directly …
Massachusetts families are spending 8% of their monthly income on health care, according to a new study. That puts the Bay State toward the higher end of the scale, coming in at No. 12 in the country.
The analysis from personal finance website WalletHub examined where people are spending the most and the least on health care.
Alaska was No. 1 in the U.S., spending over 10% of their income on health care. On the other end of the scale, Utah residents spend 5% of their income on health care.
“Sharp increases in health care costs in recent years have made it difficult for some people to seek essential care,” WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo said. “Even in states with lower-than-average health care prices, residents’ incomes may not be enough to keep up with the cost, especially since virtually every part of Americans’ budgets have been impacted by inflation over the past few years.”
To determine how much families are spending, WalletHub analyzed the prices of five key health care components across all 50 states, then combined those costs and compared them with each state’s median household income.
Read more: 1 MA Town Among 250 Best Places To Live In US News Ranking
Massachusetts spends the most on health care compared to other states in the region, according to the study. Vermont is the next-highest state in the Northeast, ranking at No. 14 with residents spending 7.98% of their income on health care.
Here are the top 10 states where people are spending the most on health care:
- Alaska
- Oregon
- Maine
- Mississippi
- West Virginia
- New Mexico
- North Carolina
- Montana
- South Dakota
- Louisiana
Check out the full study at WalletHub.
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