Hurricanes and Tornadoes That Hit Newburyport, MA

The nearest NOAA station with 1991–2020 climate normals is Groveland, MA, 10 miles southwest of Newburyport at 30 feet. July is the warmest, with an average high of 83°F and low of 62°F; January is the coolest, at 35°F and 17°F. March is the wettest at 5.0 inches of precipitation on average and August the driest at 3.4 inches; the year adds up to 49.1 inches over 82 days with at least a tenth of an inch. June to November, the hurricane season months, bring 49% of the year's precipitation (24.1 of 49.1 inches); the other six months are wetter. September has brought the most of the 45 tropical systems that passed within 75 miles (18); a normal September there has highs of 73°F and 4.1 inches of precipitation. Highs reach 90°F on about 13 days a year, almost all from June to August. Lows fall below freezing on about 147 nights a year. Snowfall averages 67.1 inches a year, most of it in January. That 49.1 inches is more than at 39 of the 65 Massachusetts stations used on this site (60%). Amesbury, 5 miles northwest, has its own station (Haverhill, MA): 49.6 inches a year, 0.5 more than here, and a July average high of 82°F against 83°F.

Water temperature at the NOAA tide station Seavey Island, ME, 20 miles north, averaged 64°F in August and 37°F in February over 2021–2025. No month averaged 80°F. Sea level at the Seavey Island tide gauge, 20 miles from Newburyport, has risen 0.87 ± 0.04 inches per decade from 1926 to 2025, NOAA's linear trend; at that pace it is 8.7 inches in a hundred years. That is faster than at 48 of the 144 U.S. gauges with a NOAA trend.

Since 1996, the National Weather Service has logged 105 flood, rain, thunderstorm wind and lightning events that began within 10 miles of Newburyport: 86 thunderstorm wind reports, 10 floods, 7 lightning strikes and 2 flash floods. They killed 1 person and injured 27, and the NWS estimated $3.8 million in property and crop damage. The strongest thunderstorm gust on record here was 98 mph, on September 6, 2014.

Flood insurance policyholders in Newburyport's ZIP code 01950 have filed 319 claims with the National Flood Insurance Program since 1978, and were paid $4.0 million for buildings and contents, in the dollars of each year. The most came from Flooding in 1978: 102 claims (32% of all) and $584,000, then The "Halloween" Storm in 1991 with 64 and Not a named storm in 1979 with 32. 72% of the claims carry the name of a storm or flood event; the rest have no event name. Of the 229 Massachusetts cities on this site with 10 or more claims, 207 have fewer than Newburyport.