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See pictures of the northern lights around the U.S.
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Spectrum News Weather Staff
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Tag: Worcester
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It’s time to spin your ceiling fan the other way
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If you have a ceiling fan, turn it on and look up at it. Which direction are the blades spinning? If they’re going counterclockwise, it’s time to change direction.
You may have noticed that your ceiling fan blades have slight angles. There’s a reason for that! They’re designed to move the room’s air a certain way, depending on which direction the fan is spinning.
Which way?
In the summer, a counterclockwise-spinning ceiling fan will push air down and out, creating a small cooling breeze.
In the winter, a clockwise-spinning ceiling fan on low-speed will draw up the air and circulate it so that it mixes. Warm air rises, so it’ll make use of the warmer air that’s hanging above your head.
To change your fan’s spin direction, check the manual to make sure you do it correctly. Most likely, the switch is on the body of the fan fixture or inside the light globe. If your fan has a remote or wall panel, check for a fan direction button there.
This little trick of running your ceiling fan the right way can also lower your energy bill. Since your fan is returning warm air down, you may find yourself turning your thermostat down.
Is your fan doing its best work?
One other note: make sure your ceiling fan is right for the room.
Ceiling fan blades work best when they’re 10 to 12 inches below the ceiling, 7 to 9 feet above the floor and at least 18 inches away from walls.
Fans with a diameter of 44 inches or less are good for circulating rooms up to 225 square feet. Larger rooms should use larger fans, often 52 inches or bigger.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Spectrum News Weather Staff
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It’s time to spin your ceiling fan the other way
[ad_1]
If you have a ceiling fan, turn it on and look up at it. Which direction are the blades spinning? If they’re going counterclockwise, it’s time to change direction.
You may have noticed that your ceiling fan blades have slight angles. There’s a reason for that! They’re designed to move the room’s air a certain way, depending on which direction the fan is spinning.
Which way?
In the summer, a counterclockwise-spinning ceiling fan will push air down and out, creating a small cooling breeze.
In the winter, a clockwise-spinning ceiling fan on low-speed will draw up the air and circulate it so that it mixes. Warm air rises, so it’ll make use of the warmer air that’s hanging above your head.
To change your fan’s spin direction, check the manual to make sure you do it correctly. Most likely, the switch is on the body of the fan fixture or inside the light globe. If your fan has a remote or wall panel, check for a fan direction button there.
This little trick of running your ceiling fan the right way can also lower your energy bill. Since your fan is returning warm air down, you may find yourself turning your thermostat down.
Is your fan doing its best work?
One other note: make sure your ceiling fan is right for the room.
Ceiling fan blades work best when they’re 10 to 12 inches below the ceiling, 7 to 9 feet above the floor and at least 18 inches away from walls.
Fans with a diameter of 44 inches or less are good for circulating rooms up to 225 square feet. Larger rooms should use larger fans, often 52 inches or bigger.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Spectrum News Weather Staff
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How tiny drones inspired by bats could save lives in dark and stormy conditions
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WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Don’t be fooled by the fog machine, spooky lights and fake bats: the robotics lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute lab isn’t hosting a Halloween party.
Instead, it’s a testing ground for tiny drones that can be deployed in search and rescue missions even in dark, smoky or stormy conditions.
Colin Balfour, a sophomore studying robotics engineering, flies a small drone at a simulated night flight at a laboratory at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, in Worcester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
A vampire bat is caught in a net in Aracy, in the northeast Amazon state of Para, Brazil, on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2005. (AP Photo/Mario Quadros, File) “We all know that when there’s an earthquake or a tsunami, the first thing that goes down is power lines. A lot of times, it’s at night, and you’re not going to wait until the next morning to go and rescue survivors,” said Nitin Sanket, assistant professor of robotics engineering. “So we started looking at nature. Is there a creature in the world which can actually do this?”
Sanket and his students found their answer in bats and the winged mammal’s highly sophisticated ability to echolocate, or navigate via reflected sound. With a National Science Foundation grant, they’re developing small, inexpensive and energy-efficient aerial robots that can be flown where and when current drones can’t operate.
Last month, emergency workers in Pakistan used drones to find people stranded on rooftops by massive floods. In August, a rescue team used a drone to find a California man who got trapped for two days behind a waterfall. And in July, drones helped find a stable route to three mine workers who spent more than 60 hours trapped underground in Canada.
Robotics engineering students change out the battery on a tiny drone at a laboratory at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, in Worcester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Nitan Sanket, assistant professor of robotics engineering, describes the components on a tiny drone at his lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, in Worcester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa) But while drones are becoming more common in search and rescue, Sanket and researchers elsewhere want to move beyond the manually operated individual robots being used today. A key next step is developing aerial robots that can be deployed in swarms and make their own decisions about where to search, said Ryan Williams, an associate professor at Virginia Tech.
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“That type of deployment — autonomous drones — that is effectively nil,” he said.
Williams tackled that problem with a recent project that involved programming drones to choose search trajectories in coordination with human searchers. Among other things, his team used historical data from thousands of missing person cases to create a model predicting how someone would behave if lost in the woods.
“And then we used that model to better localize our drones, to search in locations with higher chances of finding someone,” he said.
At WPI, Sanket’s project addresses other limitations of current drones, including their size and perception capabilities.
“Current robots are big, bulky, expensive and cannot work in all sorts of scenarios,” he said.
By contrast, his drone fits in the palm of his hand, is made mostly from inexpensive hobby-grade materials and can operate in the dark. A small ultrasonic sensor, not unlike those used in automatic faucets in public restrooms, mimics bat behavior, sending out a pulse of high-frequency sound and using the echo to detect obstacles in its path.
During a recent demonstration, a student used a remote control to launch the drone in a brightly lit room and then again after turning off all but a faintly glowing red light. As it approached a clear, Plexiglas wall, the drone repeatedly halted and backed away, even with the lights off and with fog and fake snow swirling through the air.
“Currently, search and rescue robots are mainly operational in broad daylight,” Sanket said. “The problem is that search and rescues are dull, dangerous and dirty jobs that happen a lot of times in darkness.”
But development didn’t go completely smoothly. The researchers realized that the noise of the bat robot’s propellers interfered with the ultrasound, requiring 3D printed shells to minimize the interference. They also used artificial intelligence to teach the drone how to filter and interpret sound signals.
Still, there’s a long way to go to match bats, which can contract and compress their muscles to listen only to certain echoes and can detect something as small as a human hair from several meters away.
“Bats are amazing,” Sanket said. “We are nowhere close to what nature has achieved. But the goal is that one day in the future, we will be there and these will be useful for deployment in the wild.”
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Halloween Forecast: Is it a trick or a treat?
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A chill will be in the air across much of the country for this year’s Halloween trick-or-treaters. The good news is we will see mostly dry conditions in time, but a few spots could still see rain lingering into the night.
Northeast
For much of Halloween, it will be a wet and windy day across the Northeast. Thankfully, much of the rain will clear in time for trick-or-treaters by sunset with only a few showers across Upstate New York and the northern parts of New England.
For those heading out, be sure to bring an extra layer and hold on to those witches’ hats! A gusty northwest wind will bring temperatures down into the 40s and 50s along the coast with even colder temperatures farther inland (30s) after sunset. Winds could even reach 30-40 mph at times closer to the coast.
Southeast
The forecast is a lot less frightening for the Southeast, which will see clear skies and no chance of rain. However, it will be cool with temperatures slipping into the 50s in areas as far south as Central Florida.
Central U.S.
Most of the Central U.S. will also see dry and cool weather Halloween evening. The only exception will be parts of the Northern Plains, where some scattered showers may continue.
Temperatures will range from the 30s and 40s in the Northern Plains to the 50s and 60s across Texas and the Mid-South.
West
Dry weather is likely for almost the entire West with high pressure in control. The only region that may be wet will be the coastal parts of Washington, where another atmospheric river is expected to move onshore.
It will also be cool in the Pacific Northwest with temperatures falling into the 40s and 50s. Milder weather is expected in the Southwest.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Meteorologist Ian Cassette
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Man kidnapped 7-year-old, threw her off bridge, MA officials say. He’s sentenced
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A Massachusetts man accused of kidnapping a girl and throwing her off a bridge was sentenced to prison.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
A Massachusetts man was sentenced to prison after prosecutors say he kidnapped a 7-year-old girl and tried to kill her by throwing her off a bridge.
Joshua Hubert, 43, was convicted of two counts of attempted murder, one count of strangulation and one count of kidnapping a child, according to a Sept. 19 news release from the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office.
On Oct. 17, he was sentenced to 28 to 30 years in prison, the D.A.’s office said in a news release.
Hubert’s attorney did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.
“This is a horrific case, and the Worcester Police Department is hopeful that it will provide closure to the courageous victim and her family,” Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier said in the release.
The sentencing stems from an incident that started at a cookout in August 2017.
Hubert was at a cookout with members of the girl’s family, prosecutors said.
The girl was sleeping on a couch around 2:30 a.m. Aug. 27 when authorities say Hubert grabbed her and kidnapped her, NBC News reported. He then drove around with her in his car for about an hour, officials told the news outlet.
Hubert strangled the girl, then threw her off a bridge over Lake Quinsigamond, the district attorney’s office said.
The girl survived and swam to shore, then went to a nearby home to get help, officials said.
Hubert was found not guilty of one count of aggravated rape of a child with force and one count of aggravated rape of a child with a 5-year age difference, prosecutors said.
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Jennifer Rodriguez
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Nor’easter to bring rain, strong winds and coastal flooding to East Coast
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A low pressure is expected to develop today and bring rain, wind and coastal flooding all along the east coast this weekend into early next week.
This storm system — a nor’easter, named for the wind direction it produces — usually brings heavy snow along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast during the winter months. However, any weather disturbance can take a similar track and produce wind and heavy precipitation, and that is expected to happen this weekend into early next week.
Unfortunately, the Outer Banks of N.C. will see their third storm so far this season. As recently as two weeks ago, rough surf and big waves collapsed eight homes into the Atlantic Ocean in this area.
A beach house in Rodanthe in Dare County toppled into the surf Friday. (Spectrum News 1/Lauren Howard)
Track of storm
Here’s one computer model’s interpretation of the storm.
Wind gusts
A nor’easter will produce gusty winds, and depending on the location of the storm to the coast will determine how windy it gets inland. Gusts will generally be around 30 to 50 mph for coastal regions, with some localized higher gusts. Interior sections will see less gusty conditions, with winds around 20 to 30 mph.
Rainfall totals
Rainfall totals will be highest along coastal North Carolina, with 3 to 5 inches possible.
The low is expected to move east from the coast during the day on Tuesday, taking with it the heavy rain and gusty winds.
Our team of meteorologists dives deep into the science of weather and breaks down timely weather data and information. To view more weather and climate stories, check out our weather blogs section.
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Spectrum News Weather Staff
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