Nor'easter brings heavy rain, damaging winds across Massachusetts

Grace Zokovitch, Boston Herald on Oct 13, 2025

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A nor’easter dumped rain and brought damaging gusty winds across eastern Massachusetts Monday, according to National Weather Service data, with storm conditions set to continue but taper off Tuesday.

“There’s tons of rainfall, gusty winds, and pretty rough seas out there that were crashing along the coastal areas (Monday),” NWS meteorologist Caitlyn Mensch said Monday night. “Later this afternoon, and even still ongoing right now, we’ve had a little bit of embedded heavier rainfall move in from the south. We’ve even had a couple of rumbles of thunder and some pockets of heavier rain.”

The areas hardest hit by the nor’easter storm Monday were further eastern areas in New England, Mensch said, especially throughout southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. More western regions of Massachusetts got some rain, but less than areas closer to the coastal system.

Throughout Monday, NWS received reports of three to four inches of rain across many southeast Massachusetts communities and more widespread reports of one to two inches. In the Boston area, reports came in the range of one to two inches, with one report of two and a half inches in West Roxbury on Monday.

“We’ve already seen several inches of rain that’s fallen over over southern New England already over the past day or so,” Mensch said. “It’s definitely been rain event so far, and we do expect rain to continue overnight.”

The meteorologist warned some lower-lying urban areas getting heavier rainfall for brief periods may experience some nuisance flooding as the storm continues.

The storm system also brought strong winds off the coast. Block Island recorded a max gust of 48 mph Monday, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket each recorded 49 mph, and a buoy off of Buzzards Bay recorded 54 mph, according to NWS data. At Logan airport, gusts blew up to 47 mph.

The main reports of damage came in from trees across eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Mensch said.

“A lot of the reports we’ve been getting over the last 24 hours have been a lot of trees down or trees on wires and that type of thing,” said Mensch. “We’ve been getting tons of reports out of that.”

Across Massachusetts, residents reported just under 4,000 power outages around 6:45 p.m., according to MEMA. Many outages concentrated in Eastern Massachusetts, with a cluster throughout the greater Boston area. Boston alone had just under 1,000 outages before 7 p.m.

The region also saw coastal areas battered by waves during the high tide cycles, with NWS reported waves of six to nine feet off the coast in several areas. East of Boston, Mensch said, a buoy recorded 15-foot waves Monday. Throughout the storm, waves were “definitely higher farther out,” the meteorologist said.

“The main message here is that we expect conditions to gradually start to improve (Monday night) and into (Tuesday),” said Mensch. “We’re going to start to see the wave height start to recede. The winds are going to recede a little bit. Still going to be quite breezy, but they’re expected to gradually trend downward into (Tuesday). We’re going to have rain continuing, but again, the trend is going to be downward as that coastal system starts to pull away from us.”

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