As heavy rains and wind pound Massachusetts and forecasters warn of potential flooding, power outages, and downed trees, new research affirms something many have long suspected: Ordinary rain storms are getting more intense in the eastern United States. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this week, links the findings to the climate crisis. The authors, researchers at Northwestern University, analyzed rainfall data from some 1,700 weather stations across the US. They found that in the swath of the US east of the Rocky Mountains, rainstorms dropped about 5 percent more water on average in the years 1991...