This is a web edition of GBH Daily, a weekday newsletter bringing you local stories you can trust so you can stay informed without feeling overwhelmed.
❄️More snow, with highs in the 30s. Sunset is at 5:26 p.m.
The snow is already piling up outside, and GBH meteorologist Dave Epstein is expecting as much as another foot to fall during the day today. Expect one to two feet of snow in total in most places east of Interstate 495, Epstein said. The highest amounts will probably fall around Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts, with heavy snowfall in Boston, too.
Here are two terms you might hear in forecasts and storm coverage today.
The first: bombogenesis. “Meteorologists use the term ‘bombogenesis’ when storms intensify at least one millibar every hour for 24 hours,” Epstein writes. “A millibar is a unit of pressure — think of it like a unit of measure for the air on top of us. At that rate of intensification, they’re often accompanied by very strong wind and heavy precipitation. Massachusetts is set to get both.”
Also: banding. “With storms this large, a phenomenon called ‘banding’ comes into play. Banding happens when air rapidly rises, leading to very heavy rates of precipitation. In this case the snow will be falling at one to three inches per hour just before and after sunrise on Monday. Combined with the wind, visibility will be under a quarter mile. Along the coastline, winds could top 35 mph, creating blizzard conditions.” Check out Epstein’s full forecast here.
Four Things to Know
1. After the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to strike down the rationale behind President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Brooke Thomson, president and CEO of Associated Industries of Massachusetts, said her members are hoping for a bit of relief.
“Because 96% of the burden that has been put in place as a result of this policy has been borne by Americans, and our businesses are seeing it every single day,” she said. “We had two or three examples, particularly from the central and western part of the state, where, because of the tariffs, they literally lost contracts while some of their products were en route because of the dramatic increase in cost.”
2. Chicopee will be the first place in Massachusetts to install cameras on its school buses and fine drivers caught illegally passing. The cameras will be installed on the stop sign arms that extend from the sides of buses when drivers are picking up or dropping off students. Local police officers will then review the footage and issue fines.
The company that makes the cameras, called BusPatrol, is not charging the city up front. They will instead let city officials pay for the cameras using fines they collect from drivers passing school buses illegally.
3. Boston has enough money to keep MBTA bus routes 23 (Ashmont to Ruggles), 28 (Mattapan to Ruggles) and 29 (Mattapan to Jackson Square) free for riders through June. The city uses $340,000 a month in federal pandemic relief money to make those bus routes fare-free, a program that started in 2022. But now, with that money running out and the future of more federal funding uncertain, it’s not clear what the future holds.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu noted that ridership on those three routes is up 16% compared to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and that dwell times are 20% lower because riders can board through any door and don’t have to stand in line waiting to pay their fare. A city survey shows most riders don’t save a significant amount of money, primarily because they pay to transfer over to other bus or train lines, but 26% of riders on the fare-free routes saved more than $20 a month.
4. A nonprofit in Connecticut has given 250 houses of worship funding to make their buildings more energy efficient. The work is especially necessary in some churches that are hundreds of years old and have no insulation, said Terri Eickel, executive director of the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network: “They can have issues with mold. Sometimes they have water rising up through the basement floors and stuff like that. They’ve got multiple issues to deal with, and climate change has made things worse.”
Faith leaders said it helps them put some of the money they would have spent on utility bills toward efforts like food pantries — and helps them feel like better stewards of the planet. “The Earth is a holy gift, an incredibly beautiful one,” said Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz of Temple Bnai Israel, a synagogue in Willimantic that got funding to replace an old furnace with heat pumps and to install solar panels. “To sustain it is one of our values.”
MIT requires every student to know how to swim. But why?
Let’s start with a bit of debunking: MIT never required its students to jump into the Charles River and prove that they could swim across it. But the university does require students to pass a swimming test in an indoor pool.
The origins of swimming tests as a college graduation requirement in the U.S. go back to 1905, when Cornell started mandating them. GBH’s Kirk Carapezza found that during World War II, swimming tests became more common on campuses, but these days just a few schools still require them: Cornell, Columbia, Swarthmore and MIT. Some schools have gotten rid of them because of practical issues, others because of equity concerns. At Williams College in Western Massachusetts, which did away with its swim test, a faculty committee found that almost all the students taking swimming classes were people of color or international students.
“To some extent, it felt outdated and anomalous,” Williams professor Christopher Nugent said. Plus, the school doesn’t require students to learn other basic life skills like CPR, a second language or personal finance. “There were some demographic issues there that we found a little troubling, and we would find troubling with any graduation requirement.”
But MIT is sticking with its requirement.
“We have a very intellectually bright population,” Carrie Sampson Moore, MIT’s director of physical education and wellness, told Carapezza. They might not have had the time or the access they needed to learn how to swim growing up, she said. “All of our students, I would bet my paycheck, are going to be leaders of something, right? Whether they’re a leader of their family or they’re a leader of a department or a corporation, they can influence those around them.”
So how does the swim test work at MIT? Students have to swim 100 yards across the pool, in any stroke they choose.
“I always tell them ‘There’s no style points. I can be here ’til 5,’” Sampson Moore said. “They usually get it done in anywhere between 2 to 10 minutes.”
MIT graduate Alexis Boykin told Carapezza she took some swimming classes growing up in Dayton, Ohio, but could not quite make it through the test on her first try. So she enrolled in classes during her senior year.
“The first classes were just breathing, getting underwater, trying to float,” she said. “Then you eventually progressed into different strokes, arm movement, leg movement and getting into the deeper pool.” She said she’s glad she knows how to swim and hopes MIT keeps the requirement.
You can read Carapezza’s full story here.
Dig deeper:
-Is it okay to swim in Boston’s Charles River?
-How the temperature of the Charles River can be exploited as renewable source of energy
-Local authorities debate: How much sewage in Boston-area rivers is too much?
-Callie Crossley commentary: Why are there so few Black competitive swimmers?
GBH Daily
Your essential daily newsletter delivering trusted news, local insights, ways to connect, and can't miss programs from Boston and beyond.
