Nightwatch crashes as soon as browser appears - was working and made no changes - nightwatch.js

Question

I've had a Nightwatch project running on a daily timer testing my site. I have a log file that I check every few weeks to make sure everything is going smoothly. Today I noticed it's been running, but crashing after a couple seconds of running (it usually takes half an hour to do everything).
I haven't changed the code, updated any of the packages or node, or purposefully changed anything else on my computer in the past week.
I placed a lot of logging calls in my code (I had to use my fs logger because console.log is not showing up after the process runs like it normally does). It doesn't always quit at the same point through the code, so I figured it was a Nightwatch problem and not mine.
I created a simple test file I could use to see if my complicated tests were messing things up. It prints the logs to my file, but doesn't run any of the tests and the browser pops up for less than a second before the whole thing crashes.
Current test:
const fs = require('fs');
module.exports = {
'#tags': ['getDistricts'],
'Get Districts Assert Title': function (browser) {
fs.appendFile("./log.txt", "\nBROWSER: " + JSON.stringify(browser), function (err) { });
browser.pause(100000); //prevent method from ending before tickets are retrieved
fs.appendFile("./log.txt", "\nNew run: " + new Date(), function (err) { });
browser
.url('https://www.google.com')
.waitForElementVisible('body')
.assert.title('Google')
fs.appendFile("./log.txt", "\nRan tests", function (err) { });
}
};
Log file:
BROWSER: {"capabilities":{},"globals":{"waitForConditionTimeout":15000},"sessionId":null,"options":{"screenshots":true,"screenshotsPath":"./node_modules/nightwatch/screenshots/","skip_testcases_on_fail":true,"log_screenshot_data":true,"username":"${SAUCE_USERNAME}","accessKey":"${SAUCE_ACCESS_KEY}","desiredCapabilities":{"browserName":"chrome","javascriptEnabled":true,"acceptSslCerts":true,"platform":"ANY","chromeOptions":{"args":["Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46\n (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3","--window-size=640,1136"]},"name":"Temp Test"}},"launchUrl":"http://localhost","launch_url":"http://localhost","screenshotsPath":"./node_modules/nightwatch/screenshots/","Keys":{"NULL":"","CANCEL":"","HELP":"","BACK_SPACE":"","TAB":"","CLEAR":"","RETURN":"","ENTER":"","SHIFT":"","CONTROL":"","ALT":"","PAUSE":"","ESCAPE":"","SPACE":"","PAGEUP":"","PAGEDOWN":"","END":"","HOME":"","LEFT_ARROW":"","UP_ARROW":"","RIGHT_ARROW":"","DOWN_ARROW":"","ARROW_LEFT":"","ARROW_UP":"","ARROW_RIGHT":"","ARROW_DOWN":"","INSERT":"","DELETE":"","SEMICOLON":"","EQUALS":"","NUMPAD0":"","NUMPAD1":"","NUMPAD2":"","NUMPAD3":"","NUMPAD4":"","NUMPAD5":"","NUMPAD6":"","NUMPAD7":"","NUMPAD8":"","NUMPAD9":"","MULTIPLY":"","ADD":"","SEPARATOR":"","SUBTRACT":"","DECIMAL":"","DIVIDE":"","F1":"","F2":"","F3":"","F4":"","F5":"","F6":"","F7":"","F8":"","F9":"","F10":"","F11":"","F12":"","COMMAND":"","META":""},"expect":{},"assert":{},"verify":{},"currentEnv":"tempTest_1","currentTest":{"name":"Get Districts Assert Title","module":"tempTest","results":{"steps":[],"passed":0,"failed":0,"errors":0,"skipped":0,"tests":0,"testcases":{},"timestamp":"Thu, 22 Aug 2019 18:50:31 GMT","time":0},"group":""}}
New run: Thu Aug 22 2019 13:50:31 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Ran tests
npm test --verbose:
npm info it worked if it ends with ok
npm verb cli [ 'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node.exe',
npm verb cli 'C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js',
npm verb cli 'test',
npm verb cli '--verbose' ]
npm info using npm#6.9.0
npm info using node#v10.16.0
npm verb run-script [ 'pretest', 'test', 'posttest' ]
npm info lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~pretest: artms-nightwatch#1.0.24
npm info lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~test: artms-nightwatch#1.0.24
> artms-nightwatch#1.0.24 test C:\Users\malai\Nightwatch
> nightwatch --env local
Starting selenium server in parallel mode... started - PID: 23680
Started child process for: tempTest
>> tempTest finished.
npm verb lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~test: unsafe-perm in lifecycle true
npm verb lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~test: PATH: C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\npm-lifecycle\node-gyp-bin;C:\Users\malai\Nightwatch\node_modules\.bin;C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Oracle\Java\javapath;C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_211\bin;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\;C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft VS Code\bin;C:\Program Files\Git\cmd;C:\Program Files\nodejs\;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;C:\Program Files\dotnet\;C:\Program Files (x86)\dotnet\;C:\Users\malai\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;C:\Users\malai\AppData\Roaming\npm;C:\Program Files\Intel\WiFi\bin\;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Intel\WirelessCommon\;C:\Users\malai\.dotnet\tools
npm verb lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~test: CWD: C:\Users\malai\Nightwatch
npm info lifecycle artms-nightwatch#1.0.24~test: Failed to exec test script
npm ERR! Test failed. See above for more details.
npm verb exit [ 1, true ]
npm timing npm Completed in 4145ms
npm verb code 1

Answer 1

I was never able to figure out why it stopped working, but I started from scratch and rebuilt the project on the most recent version of Nightwatch and copied my tests over and it's working again.