High Winds Knock Down Trees All Over Mansfield

MANSFIELD, MA — Mansfield police advised residents "only leave your homes if you must" Monday night as downed trees and power lines from the day's high winds had roads closed all over town. Police said the areas of West and Grove streets were impassable with at least three three trees down, dragging power lines down with them.

More than 85,000 customers in Massachusetts were without power Monday afternoon as a fierce storm intensified. The Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency reported 85,488 in the dark as of 4:17 p.m. Thousands were without power in cities directly north of Boston, while towns to the south and west of the city are seeing some of the worst per-population outages. More than half of Weston and three quartersof Millis is in the dark

The strongest recorded wind gust was at the Blue Hills Observatory in Milton, where an unofficial reading hit 87 miles per hour.

Earlier in the afternoon, Gov. Charlie Baker said health care at the state's hospitals shouldn't be interrupted in the event of outages. Baker said hospitals have power backups that can last several days, providing energy so workers can keep providing care to a health care system that is being strained due to a the number COVID-19 patients.

Baker said utility crews will be in position to deal with outages throughout Monday.

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