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Winter storm whips up heavy winds, floods roads in coastal communities in Mass.

By Andrew Brinker Globe Staff,Updated January 17, 2022, 4:45 p.m.

A powerful winter storm swept across the Northeast region overnight Monday, burying some towns in Western Massachusetts in more than a foot of snow and whipping up winds that flooded roads and took down power lines in some coastal communities on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Early Monday afternoon, some 12,000 customers were without power in Massachusetts, according to an outage map from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. That count had dwindled to 105 customers as of 8:47 p.m.

Gusts of wind reached nearly 70 miles per hour early Monday morning in some coastal communities like Falmouth, Gloucester, Rockport, and Lynn, where the National Weather Service tweeted photos of roads inundated by coastal flooding. At Boston’s Long Wharf, water spilled onto the sidewalk Monday afternoon.

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The wind took down power lines and limbs, and gusts as high as 67 miles per hour were reported on Cape Cod and 68 miles per hour in Rhode Island. Just south of Boston, at Blue Hill Observatory, a gust of wind reached 65 miles per hour.

But the region was mostly spared from the full ire of the storm, which brought a blast of snow and ice late last week to Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas, where governors were forced to declare a state of emergency.

Some airlines grounded flights because of the conditions.

At Boston’s Logan International Airport, some 129 flights had been delayed and 116 were canceled as of 8:43 p.m. Monday, according to FlightAware.

A spokeswoman for MassPort, Jennifer Mehigan, said that she was anticipating some delays because of the heavy winds.

“Important to note that Cape Air has the majority and they operate smaller aircraft,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Cape Air, which operates a fleet of small planes that are often grounded in blustery conditions, accounted for about 43 percent of the cancellations. A company representative did not immediately return a request for comment.

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Sunshine broke through the cloud cover across much of the Northeast region early Monday afternoon, as the storm system shifted toward Vermont and New York.

Only Western Massachusetts was still seeing consistent rainfall by noon, said Frank Nocera, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Norton office. Some towns, like Hawley and Rowe, received a blast of snow overnight that tallied 14.2 and 14 inches, respectively, before the precipitation turned to rain, the National Weather Service reported Monday night.

Conditions were slushy in Western Massachusetts, but Eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut saw the snow that was received overnight completely washed out by the rain, Nocera said.

Snow showers also passed through parts of Connecticut and Central Massachusetts Monday night, with icy roads a possibility in those areas due to colder air moving into the region overnight, the weather service said.

Monday’s storm, which the weather service said on Twitter Sunday originated in the Gulf of Mexico, may be followed later this week by more bitter cold.

“Blustery and cold weather returns Tuesday followed by milder air Wednesday,” the weather service said.

Andrew Brinker can be reached at andrew.brinker@globe.com. Follow him @andrewnbrinker.

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