Category: Boston, Massachusetts Local News

CONCORD, MASS. (WHDH) – A group of volunteers are working to preserve a historic natural landscape in Concord.

The Heywood Meadow draws in visitors with its natural beauty and rich history.

The British redcoats marched in and out of Concord through the meadow.

Writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau walked through the meadow.

“The Meadow has evolved, and it takes a lot of work and thinking to strike the balance between historical accuracy, which is very difficult, ecological responsibility, and then thirdly just how it looks to our residents and to visitors,” said Heywood Meadow stewardship community member Peter Lee.

Volunteers said they’re focused on adding native plants and grasses and supporting wildlife.

(Copyright (c) 2025 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

New England electricity companies are still in the process of restoring power to well over 100,000 customers after a blizzard on Monday took out power across Eastern Massachusetts. 

Power companies warn that, for some, the restoration process might take a few days.

“The last couple customers, unfortunately, will be a couple days out,” Doug Foley, President of Electric Operations at Eversource, said at a press conference.

National Grid also told customers that complete power restoration will take time.

“There could be some stragglers that go into Thursday, but we’re going to work really hard to have everybody on by Wednesday night, at midnight,” Chris Laird, COO of New England Electric for National Grid, said at a press conference Tuesday.

Both electricity companies say they worked to restore power to customers all throughout Tuesday. 

According to National Grid, more than 94,000 of its customers lost power during the blizzard. As of 7 a.m. on Tuesday, more than 71,000 customers had had their power restored.

As of early Tuesday afternoon, 220,000 Eversource customers were still without power, spokesperson Olessa Stepanova told Boston.com. Eversource had restored 170,000 customers already, she said.

Both companies said the blizzard’s high winds delayed their ability to restore power, with workers unable to go up in bucket trucks to work on electrical wires.

“We had those high winds. We had blizzard conditions. We had snow drifts. We had winds that hit 77 to 80 miles an hour on the Cape. So when that happens, our crews simply can’t go out in bucket trucks,” Stepanova said.

Both companies said they anticipated the storm and coordinated response plans. 

“We had crews pre-positioned on Martha’s Vineyard and other places that we knew would be tough to access. We were planning for the storm days ahead, so we knew which areas were expected to get hit hardest, and that’s where we had crews ready to go starting over the weekend,” Stepanova said.

National Grid sent out crews to Nantucket before the storm hit. 

“To support restoration efforts on Nantucket, National Grid pre‑positioned crews on the island ahead of the storm and is sending an additional 10 utility and forestry crews today, as workers continue to address damage caused by wind gusts that exceeded 80 mph yesterday,” National Grid said in a statement. 

Data shared by electrical companies show that Cape Cod and the Islands were hit hardest by outages, with several towns on the Cape still completely without power Tuesday night.

Both companies said they’ve deployed swarms of personnel. National Grid said it had more than 560 field crews out responding to the power outages.

Eversouce has “thousands of personnel and hundreds of crews, contractor crews, and our crews that are out there all day today, surveying and assessing and doing the restorations,” Stepanova said.

Malden police are investigating an undisclosed incident within the city’s public school district which led to an employee being placed on leave.

Superintendent Timothy Sippel announced in a community statement Sunday that a “serious incident” is alleged to have occurred involving the employee and one of the district’s high school students. Malden police informed the district Feb. 19 that the employee was being investigated.

The employee was confirmed to work at the Linden School, also known as the Linden STEAM Academy, which serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade. As of Sunday, no arrests have been made or charges filed in the wake of the allegations, according to the statement.

Nevertheless, the district opted to place the employee on administrative leave “out of an abundance of caution and to ensure our students’ safety,” according to Sippel. The alleged incident occurred outside of working hours, according to the statement. No further information was available as of Tuesday night.

“I will share more information once it has been released by local law enforcement,” Sippel said in the statement. “Please be assured we will continue to do everything necessary to protect the safety of our students and staff, which is our highest priority.”

BOSTON (WHDH) – Governor Maura Healey is lifting the travel ban for Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable and Dukes counties at noon on Tuesday.

Residents of those counties are still advised to use caution and stay home if possible until all cleanup efforts are over.

The state of emergency remains in effect for all counties except for Berkshire, Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin, while several communities, including New Bedford, Fall River, Brockton and others still have local travel restrictions and parking bans.

“While we are lifting the travel ban, the state of emergency remains in effect for some counties, and we urge people to continue using caution and stay home today if possible to allow crews to do their work,” said Governor Healey. “Our teams continue to be out in full force to support cities and towns after this storm, providing equipment and personnel to help with snow removal and other efforts. We know that there are still many households without power, and the utilities are working hard to assess damage and restore power as quickly and safely as possible. We thank the people of Massachusetts for their patience and caution while we work to get back to normal, and we are especially grateful for all of the workers who continue to be out here around the clock to deliver for our communities.” 

(Copyright (c) 2025 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

For more than 153 years, the press workers of The Boston Globe have overcome the elements, technical snafus, and global pandemics to print a daily newspaper. But in an unprecedented decision, executives determined that the conditions during Monday’s blizzard made it impossible to print and deliver a paper Tuesday morning.

A massive nor’easter blasted New England with more than 2 feet of snow and turbulent winds that prevented the paper’s printing staff from safely getting to Taunton, now the home of the Globe printing press. Taunton, the surrounding towns, and most of Rhode Island were near the epicenter of the storm, which in some places dumped nearly 3 feet of snow.

Print subscribers will have to wait until Wednesday to receive the Tuesday edition of the Globe, along with the regularly scheduled Wednesday edition.

“We don’t take the decision lightly,” said Josh Russell, vice president of print operations at Boston Globe Media, in an interview. “We’re not confident that even if we got a crew in tonight, that we could get the papers on our trucks safely. We weren’t confident that that last mile would be doable.”

The blizzard also affected Monday’s delivery, with only 25 percent of papers having been delivered to subscribers.

While print subscribers will get Tuesday’s paper delivered on Wednesday, single copies of the paper will not be available in retail stores, said Jamie Nee, the Globe’s executive director of sales strategy and fulfillment.

By all accounts, including interviews with longtime pressroom employees and a review of the Globe historical archive, the decision marks the first time that management has called off production of a daily paper since the organization’s founding in 1872. (Labor strikes halted production on a few occasions in the 1950s and ‘60s.)

Even during the historic Blizzard of ‘78, the Globe printed a few thousand copies of the Feb. 7, 1978, edition, though its delivery trucks couldn’t get through the piles of snow around its old offices on Morrissey Boulevard.

The press workers of the Globe, many of whom have worked for the Globe for decades and commute from all over the state, aren’t used to days without a paper. Russell added that during previous storms there has “never been a question” as to whether pressmen and drivers would come in, which speaks to the historic nature of the decision not to publish Tuesday morning and the resilience of the print staff.

“They have a dedication to the process,” Dan Stenstrom, the superintendent of the pressroom who first joined the Globe in 1985, said of his colleagues. “As much as today gives them pause, they know they’ll be in there tomorrow.”

Chris Johnson, executive director of manufacturing at Boston Globe Publishing Services, said on Monday he got stuck on the way to the facility and was pulled out by another truck. Then, that truck and its driver went 30 feet and got stuck, prompting Johnson to help him out of the snow. He also was stopped by a fire truck that couldn’t move off of railroad tracks because the snow was so deep.

“It took me almost two hours to get to the plant and I got a four-wheel drive pickup truck,” he said. “It was just not going to work. The risk reward is upside down.”

The decision not to print a paper is rare at any paper.

Paul Tash, the longtime former chief executive and chair of the Tampa Bay Times, often grappled with printing delays during hurricane season. Sometimes the paper would be late, and sometimes there was no home delivery, but they always managed to get a print edition out in his 47 years there, he said.

But like many other papers, faced with a loss of readers and the advertising revenues that followed them, the Times has cut back on print to two days a week.

“It felt particularly poignant,” Tash said. “We thought, at the time, we needed to preserve the news or preserve the paper. We stuck with the news.”

The Globe has not been immune to the challenges of the media industry, but it has been able to sustain a seven-day print product while also being one of the rare, profitable newspapers in the country.

While print readers won’t be able to stain their hands with ink Tuesday, the Globe of course has continued to publish stories online.

That wasn’t the case in 1978, when the Globe couldn’t get its issue out the door.

The Globe rallied its staff to put together a paper during the historic 1978 storm, and cheers sprang up across the Morrissey Boulevard newsroom — which the Globe departed in 2017 — when its presses began to run for the Tuesday, Feb. 7 edition. But the press run was short-lived, as delivery trucks weren’t able to get more than a mile or two from the Dorchester building.

The snow continued through that Tuesday and Globe staff weren’t able to leave the building, which meant many employees — including in the newsroom — found furniture around the building to sleep on.

“Governor Dukakis told everyone to stay put, and yet the Globe resumed publication on Wednesday morning,” wrote Thomas Gagen, a former chief editorial writer for the Globe, in 2008.

The Globe’s headquarters are now at 53 State St. in downtown Boston, meaning the paper is no longer printed at the same location as its newsroom.

While the Globe had printed continuously since 1978, there have been delivery problems over the years.

Most notably, thousands of Globe subscribers did not receive print editions in 2016 for weeks after the Globe switched to a new distribution partner. Staff across the Globe volunteered to deliver papers as top staff worked to fix the problem.

Catherine Carlock and Jeremiah Manion of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.

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SPENCER, MASS. (WHDH) – Six people were rushed to the hospital after a fire tore through a home in Spencer on Monday.

Crews responding to a reported structure fire on May Street found the home fully engulfed.

Several pets died in the fire.

The cause remains under investigation.

(Copyright (c) 2025 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

AJ Brown wasn’t Mike Vrabel’s biggest fan during their early days together in Tennessee.

During a recent episode of the “Dudes on Dudes” podcast, Brown told Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski that his relationship with Vrabel has evolved over the years. Back then, they weren’t as “comfortable” with each other as they are now, Brown said.

“I always remember this critical moment with [Vrabel]. I’ll give you some inside too. Two stories really quick,” Brown said. “So, [Vrabel] is the type of coach who, he’s going to call on you in the meetings. He’s going to make sure you’re staying engaged and he’s going to go over the keys to victory for the week. You better know them like the back of your hand.”

“I used to write in my notebook -because at the time I didn’t really like [Vrabel] – I didn’t like him, I’ll admit it, he knows that. So, I used to write ‘I hate [Vrabel], I hate [Vrabel], I hate [Vrabel].”

Brown said he was pretending to take notes so that it would look like he was paying attention. During his rookie year, he didn’t understand why Vrabel seemed to be so hard on him.

“At the time, I told [Vrabel], I was like ‘hey I’m humble already’, you don’t have to humble me. But, I didn’t understand what he was trying to push me to be.”

Brown recorded the first of his six 1,000-yard seasons that year in 2019. He caught 52 passes for 1,051 yards and eight touchdowns. The Titans made the playoffs and knocked the Patriots out in the Wild Card Round before losing to the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game.

Brown recalled another instance when the coach caught his attention.

“He showed a clip, I ran like a Bang-8 and I scored. He praised me, so I was kind of feeling good about myself, right? I’m a rookie. A couple of plays later, he shows me another play with the Bang 8 and I get tackled.”

“He’s like ‘what’s the difference between the first play and the second play?’ He was like ‘you’re tired.’ He was like ‘that’s not going to cut it’. That same mentality that you showed on the first play, you should do that all the time. That’s who you are.”

The standard that Vrabel holds his players to stuck with the wide receiver.

“When I say that he holds every single [person] accountable from top to bottom, I don’t care who it is. That’s who he is and it makes the team come together because nobody is bigger than the team, nobody is bigger than the program, so you have to respect it.”

Fast-forward to 2026, and Vrabel is coaching the Patriots who still have room for improvement at the receiver position. Brown is frequently coming up as a potential trade candidate. The Patriots were one of four teams that ESPN used as hypothetical trade destinations for Brown last week. Brown has also mentioned publicly that he grew up a Patriots fan.

He’s still under contract with the Eagles, so it would take some draft capital for the Patriots to get him. That hasn’t stopped the speculation of possible interest from the Patriots one bit.

Khari A. Thompson

Sports Reporter

Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.