FREEZE PLAY FOR THE HUB
Post-Christmas air will have frigid feel
The giddiness many Bostonians felt while taking in the city’s first white Christmas in nearly a decade will be short-lived thanks to an Arctic blast of frigid air that will keep temperatures below freezing into next week.
“It’s going to be cold — way, way cold,” warned National Weather Service meteorologist Eleanor Vallier-Talbot.
Highs in Boston are only supposed to reach into the mid- to upper 20s through Thursday, when high winds and an anticipated high temperature of 11 degrees will have it feeling like 10 below in the Hub.
Wind chill temperatures are expected to feel even colder Thursday morning in parts of Central and Western Massachusetts, Vallier-Talbot said.
“Once we go down below freezing, we will not come up above freezing until sometime next week,” she said.
Yesterday’s wintry weather provided Boston with its first white Christmas since 2009, when 4 inches of snow was recorded at Logan International Airport.
Nearly 3 inches fell at the airport yesterday, while 4 inches fell in Dorchester, Vallier-Talbot said.
Some Merrimack Valley communities, she said, including Acton and Boxford, reported receiving 7 inches of snow.
While many Bay State residents set out to enjoy the snow, others found themselves in the dark.
National Grid crews worked into the evening to repair 20 reported outages affecting 3,700 customers statewide.
Eversource, meanwhile, had 20,000 customers without power early yesterday morning, mainly on Cape Cod, where wind gusts of up to 70 mph were reported.
By last night, the company said the number of outages had been cut to 7,300.
Eversource spokesman Michael Durand said crews would be “working through the night and into tomorrow to restore power to everyone.”