Massachusetts
Severe Flooding, Power Outages Across MA With More Heavy Rain On Way
MASSACHUSETTS — Flooded roads, onshore splash, swamps of melting snow, and some wind damage were all left in the wake of the latest winter storm that dumped nearly 5 inches of rain in some cities and towns across the state with wind gusts approaching 70 miles per hour early Wednesday morning.
A springlike day with temperatures well into the 50s and sunshine follows that storm with another similar one set to hit New England late Friday night into early Saturday.
There were mostly scattered power outages on Wednesday morning with the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency reporting a little less than 5,000 outages across the state as of 10 a.m.
Many of those outages were on Cape Ann with Rockport reporting 925 customers without power, Gloucester at 225 and Hamilton at 117.
A Flood Watch remained in effect in most of Massachusetts through 1 p.m., through the National Weather Service.
The winds roared for a stretch early Wednesday morning with Chatham and Dennis on the Cape recording 65 mph gusts, and Wellfleet at 64.
Hull on the South Shore also hit 64 mph, with Duxbury at 55.
Beverly was the high mark on Cape Ann, according to the NWS, with a recorded gust of 58 mph, Nantucket recorded a gust of 56 mph, New Bedford got pounded along the South Coast at 54 mph, and Logan Airport recorded a gust of 55 mph.
Rain totals were also impressive with Hopkinton hitting 4.7 inches, Wrentham 4.4 inches, Dover 3.7 inches, Bellingham 3.7 inches, Amesbury 3.6 inches and Sutton 3.5 inches.
Flooding was reported in Southborough, Northborough, Plymouth, Saugus, Chelsea, Braintree and other coastal locations with concerns about the Wednesday morning high tide running at 1 to 3 inches of inundation.
Exit 13 in Dorchester was closed at Morrissey Boulevard around the time of high tide on Wednesday, while shore roads were also closed in Salisbury and Newbury approaching Plum Island.
A nice day was on tap for Wednesday with April-like temperatures and continued melting in areas where a heavy snowpack remains.
The unseasonable warmth will remain on Thursday and Friday with high temperatures in the mid-40s across the region both days and minimal re-freezing at night.
That sets the stage for the next storm on Friday night — which is shaping up as a slightly more tame version of Tuesday night’s storm.
The National Weather Service is forecasting rain to develop overnight Friday into Saturday and be heavy at times through Saturday morning. Once again, the temperatures will soar with highs in the upper 50s with rain totals between 1 and 2 inches.
Winds will increase out of the southeast but should not reach the levels of the past 24 hours with peak gusts in the 40s and sustained winds between 25 and 35 mph.
Temperatures will drop back into the 20s on Saturday with more seasonable — and quieter — weather expected through Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
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.
Massachusetts
MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, shot and killed in his home in Brookline, Mass. | Fortune
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fatally shot at his home near Boston, and authorities said Tuesday they had launched a homicide investigation.
Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The prosecutor’s office said no suspects had been taken into custody as of Tuesday afternoon, and that its investigation was ongoing.
Loureiro, who joined MIT in 2016, was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he aimed to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm.
Loureiro, who was married, grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, it said.
“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.
The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that Loureiro’s death was a “shocking loss.”
The homicide investigation in Brookline comes as police in Providence, Rhode Island, about 50 miles away, continue to search for the gunman who killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University on Saturday. The FBI on Tuesday said it knew of no connection between the crimes.
A 22-year-old student at Boston University who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday evening and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”
Some of Loureiro’s students visited his home, an apartment in a three-story brick building, Tuesday afternoon to pay their respects, the Globe reported.
The U.S. ambassador to Portugal, John J. Arrigo, expressed his condolences in an online post that honored Loureiro for his leadership and contributions to science.
“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”
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