22News at 4: Digital Edition

Streaming from the 22 News Broadcast Center. This is 22 News at 4 p.m. Digital Edition. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to 22 News at 4. I'm Christina DeMores. We'll get to your top four at 4 in just a moment. But first, a look at your commuter traffic and weather with Brian Lapis, who joins me now. Hey, Brian, how are you? I'm doing well. How about you? Good. Happy Wednesday. It is your Wednesday. Wow. How about that? Is it not yours? It's my Tuesday. Oh. Anyways. Well, it's because I had to get it. Because you weren't here on Monday. Yes. Yes. All right. So we're kind of on the same plane. Yes, yes. So weather today, different from the last couple of days. It's warmer. Yeah, we got close to 80 today in some places. How about that? Yeah. There'll be an autumnal change here very soon. Oh, good. Cool change. Let's take a look at traffic first. You can see here that we've got a little bit of a backup, excuse me, on I-91 southbound in Hatfield. Might be an accident there or some construction, so just keep that in mind. the pike is running fine and downtown is also looking pretty good let's take a look at temperatures right now 77 in springfield so close to 80 degrees 75 westfield 72 in greenfield and scattered clouds it's actually kind of ominous here during the middle of the day and there were a couple of sprinkles in some spots rest of the day will be dry and we start to cool down overnight it's a cooler day here tomorrow we'll show you with our 22 news storm team forecast we have some developing news on Lamar Cook, a former aide for Governor Maura Healey. Cook has now been charged with fraudulently receiving more than 500 monthly payments in SNAP benefits. Court documents allege Cook applied for SNAP benefits in April of this year with multiple false claims, including that he lived in a two-person household, had zero income, and less than $100 in his bank account. He's facing one count of SNAP and wire fraud and will appear in federal court in Boston later today if convicted of both charges he could face up to 25 years in prison we'll have a full report of his new case starting at five two juveniles are under arrest following an attempted home invasion and a string of vehicle break-ins in springfield police say the two 17 year old individuals were spotted on surveillance cameras early sunday morning after fleeing a home on rutledge avenue investigators say the pair allegedly tried to break into seven vehicles on East Columbus Avenue and successfully got into one, stealing a wallet. Both suspects are from Springfield. Their names are being withheld because of their ages. Springfield Technical Community College says it will be closed for the rest of the day due to a power outage. They said all on-campus activities, online classes, and remote work are canceled and the power outage will not be resolved today. Students and employees are encouraged to watch for further updates from STCC. The college says critical safety functions are being powered by generators, and Eversource is working to determine the cause of the outage. Westfield's planning board is denying a request to extend a special permit for Super Service Stars, that is, proposed data center. The company was seeking three additional years to move forward with the project, which was first approved back in 2021. But construction still had not begun as of last month. The decision comes as Westfield has a one-year moratorium on new data centers, although Service Star's project had been exempt from that restriction. Now let's get another check of today's weather with Brian Lapps here. Brian, you said we almost hit the 80s today? Yeah, well, we got to 77 at Westover Air Reserve Base today. So in October, that might as well be 80, right? Right. Stuffy. Yeah. Yeah, very stuffy. There were even a couple of sprinkles here and there, at least on radar earlier today. But I'm expecting that this transition to cooler air will be arriving even as we get into the evening hours. So there's relief on the way for if you like more crisp air for this time of year, right? Let's take a look. Clouds and radar, 344 scattered clouds overhead, and the drying will commence as we move into the evening hours. There still will be some scattered clouds around tonight, I expect. Evening temperatures will be in the 60s and 50s. Eventually, we get into an overnight low of 42 to 48 here tomorrow morning. But it's a bright day. Sunshine at 7 o'clock. Light breeze from the north here all day tomorrow. Sunshine, and even with the sunshine, our high temperatures will be in the upper 50s to low 60s. So a tad below average for tomorrow after a very above average day in terms of temperature earlier this afternoon. We have some rain on the way in for Friday. We'll show that to you on 22 News starting at 5. Trending today, the state lottery says time is running out to claim $100,000 mass cash prize that was sold in Springfield. The unclaimed prize, won on November 15, 2025, is set to expire next month. The winning ticket was sold by Acres Newsstand, located at 1922 Wilbraham Road in Springfield. If it's not claimed, it will become part of the net profit the lottery returns to the state for distribution to all 351 cities and towns. Disney Cruise Lines continues a major expansion of its fleet. This comes after the reveal of the Disney Believe last week. As the company prepares to launch the vessel in December of 2027, they're already designing a new class of smaller ships to grow the fleet to 13 by 2030. Disney has ordered three new ships in this new class, each measuring 100,000 gross tons and set to carry around 3,000 guests. Now for a look at what we're working on for 22 News starting at 5. We'll have the latest updates on Lamar Cook's arrest following his scheduled appearance in federal court this afternoon. Plus, independent congressional candidate Nadia Milleron held a news conference this morning in response to what she calls slanderous attacks, ads, by her Democratic opponent. And learn why state health officials are trying to revoke the license of the operator behind 12 Regal Care nursing homes in the Bay State. Quick look at traffic. Still a backup now that's actually lengthening on I-91 south in the Hatfield area. So keep in mind that there could be an accident there that may slow you down if you're coming from Franklin County into points south of Hatfield. Slight backup now, 291 downtown. That's typical for this time of day. The pike looks pretty good. We'll update our chances for rain for late in the week on 22 News starting at 5. All right. Thank you, Brian. And thank you for joining us for 22 News at 4. Join us on TV tonight, starting at 5. And get all your local news and weather updates anytime on WWLP.com, the 22 News mobile app.