Rhode Island information guide
A local headline is a starting point. Use this desk to find the underlying record, check what has changed, and reach the right public source for your town.
Eastern RI News service guide · Published November 13, 2026 · Prepared with AI assistance and checked against the linked public sources. This is a guide to using information, not original news reporting or legal advice.
Choose a community to see its municipal website, configured local feeds, weather view and coastal station assignment. All 39 communities are included; missing feed coverage is identified explicitly.
Follow a decision from agenda to record
Keep a simple record of the question you are trying to answer: the town, the board, the meeting date and the agenda item. This prevents a search result about a proposal from being mistaken for the final decision.
- Find the body. Open the Rhode Island Open Meetings search. Use the Public Bodies field and a date range. The state recommends the municipality's name followed by “City of” or “Town of” for a community-wide search. Check the result's full name before opening it.
- Open the meeting date. The portal links the date to the agenda; the public body's name opens its details. For a school issue, look for the school committee rather than assuming the council's packet contains it.
- Read the actual item. Record the item number and the document's date. Look for attached material, location, participation instructions and any revision or cancellation. Our calendar is a collected feed and can miss updates; recheck the official posting before attending.
- Separate the question from the outcome. An agenda shows what is scheduled for consideration. To establish what happened, look for minutes or another published record of the action. If the document you need is missing, use the body's listed contact rather than infer an outcome from a headline.
A reusable meeting research checklist
This checklist stays on this page; it is not submitted or stored by us.
Sources checked November 13: Department of State meeting search and instructions; Open Government Center. For access-to-records or legal questions, follow the state's guidance.
Three different readings: weather, radar and tide
On this site, a temperature, a radar frame and a tide prediction do not necessarily describe the same place or moment. Read their labels separately before comparing them.
Temperature
An observation describes a station reading. A forecast describes an expected period. Our cards label the type and time; an older cached reading is not a fresh measurement. Open the town's weather page to check the selected location and forecast periods.
Radar
The top-left radar is a sequence of recent imagery. The displayed frame time belongs to that image, not to the temperature beside it. Use the controls to inspect the sequence, and use the official forecast and alerts for the outlook.
Tide
Our high/low table uses NOAA station predictions, in feet relative to MLLW, with times displayed in Eastern Time. Check the station name. A town assignment is a convenient reference; it does not describe every beach, inlet or river reach.
NOAA distinguishes predicted tides from the water level that actually occurs: wind, runoff and other short-term weather can change the observed level. Tide height also does not establish current speed or the time of slack water. A predicted high tide is not a flood forecast or a navigation clearance.
For a Rhode Island coastal outing, compare the selected station with the current NWS Boston/Norton forecast and hazards. If data is unavailable here, follow the official source; an empty alert list is not an all-clear.
Sources checked November 13: NOAA tide/current FAQ; NWS local forecast office. Display explanations were checked against this site's weather and tide implementation.
What a source-linked news preview establishes
Our publisher entries contain a headline, a short feed description when supplied, and an outbound link. They are not independently reported articles. The publisher's original page supplies the reporting, author, full context and later corrections.
- Publication time comes from the source when available. “Added” means our system did not receive a publication time.
- Feed check time means our system encountered the entry in a feed. It does not mean a person fact-checked the story.
- Town tags are automated navigation aids. They can include a place mentioned in passing and are not proof that every event happened there.
- Location photographs illustrate the named place. They are credited file images, not evidence of the event in a news headline.
If a preview and its source disagree, use Report a correction with both links and the discrepancy. Do not send private records to explain a public headline. You can inspect our source directory and refresh status to see where the information comes from.