Flash floods hit cities and towns south of Boston Thursday as historic rain brought traffic to a crawl and shut down part of I-93.

I-93 was essentially a river Thursday morning as torrential downpours dumped up to six inches of rain across eastern Massachusetts. As you probably heard from your phone's alert system screaming at you,

Several Massachusetts communities south of Boston received as much as over 5 inches of rain, with flooding closing several streets and parts of Interstate 93.