Tropical Storm Henri Brings Power Outages and Record Rain to Northeast

Against gathering winds, the 400-ton steel doors of the hurricane barrier in New Bedford, Mass., groaned into place, sealing off the region’s largest fishing port. The vessels that made it inside were packed tight — wooden sailboats and lavish yachts jammed beside the rusted fishing boats more typical of the industrial harbor. Those still at sea were expected to find another port.

Off Block Island, south of mainland Rhode Island, a 19-foot wave was recorded around 9 a.m. At 11 a.m., the heart of the storm passed over Block Island, and at 12:15 p.m., Henri made landfall in Westerly, R.I., with sustained winds of 57 miles per hour in nearby Port Judith and a gust of 70 m.p.h.

By then, the winds and rain had downed trees and power lines across the state, and 80,000 homes in Rhode Island were without power, according to the utility National Grid. About three-quarters of households went dark in Washington County, R.I., which is home to more than 125,000 people and includes Westerly.

Over the course of the afternoon, crews worked frantically to get the lights back on, but as of 6 p.m., nearly 70,000 Rhode Island homes were still without power.

As the afternoon wore on, the storm tracked a northwest course across Connecticut, headed toward Western Massachusetts, and was expected to cut east along southern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine before heading out to sea again.

On the Massachusetts coast, the approaching storm had churned up memories of Hurricane Bob, which killed more than a dozen people, caused $680 million in damage and altered the Cape Cod coastline in 1991.

On Martha’s Vineyard, an island just south of Cape Cod, Sunday’s forecast “looked like we were dead in the cross hairs” of a hurricane, said Charlie Blair, harbormaster in the town of Edgartown.