At a Glance
- The first nor'easter of the season brought damaging winds and flooding rainfall to the Northeast.
- This system rapidly intensified and reached criteria for being a bomb cyclone.
A powerful nor'easter brought damaging winds and flooding rainfall to the Northeast.
Damaging winds hit southeast New England the hardest Tuesday night into early Wednesday, downing trees and power lines across the region, especially in southeast Massachusetts.
More than 490,000 homes and businesses had lost power in Massachusetts as of Wednesday morning, according to poweroutage.us. Tens of thousands have also lost power in Rhode Island and southern Maine.
The total number of outages in New England was over 600,000 as of 9:30 a.m. EDT.
Winds gusted up to 84 mph in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and 94 mph at Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard. Multiple other locations in far southeast Massachusetts clocked gusts over 70 mph.
An intense low-pressure system called a bomb cyclone is to blame for the strong winds. This means low pressure dropped by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours.
Strong winds from the nor'easter also produced large, pounding surf along the coast of Massachusetts. Boats were pushed out of the water in Cohasset.
Heavy rain from this storm system triggered flooding in the Northeast on Tuesday.
Water rescues were reported in parts of Monmouth and Somerset counties, New Jersey, and in Damascus Township, Pennsylvania.
The upper-level disturbance that helped trigger the formation of this nor'easter also produced flooding in upstate New York.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
