A nor’easter threatened to unravel progress made since Hurricane Sandy ravaged the New York area, delivering a second angry serving of howling wind and high water Wednesday in places where misery and frustration had yet to recede.

The nor’easter, a chilly brew of rain and wet snow blown in by gusts almost as powerful as those recorded during the hurricane, arrived with the dismaying potential to disrupt efforts to get life back to normal from the Jersey Shore to the East End of Long Island.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie warned that the nor’easter could leave many people in the dark again, onlya few days after their power had been restored.

“I can see us actually moving backwards,” Christie said at a news conference on Long Beach Island, which suffered some of the heaviest damage in the storm last week. The barrier island had reopened to residents, but as the nor’easter closed in, the governor said he was cutting off access again.

The storm, which covered cars and trees in the region in a coat of white, toppled power lines faster than repair crews could keep up, and fierce winds and blowing snow threatened to drive the crews off the job.

By about 5 p.m., the nor’easter had knocked out electricity to roughly 16,000 Consolidated Edison customers. All told, about 80,000 Consolidated Edison customers had no power Wednesday evening, according to the company’s website.

The numbers also went up on Long Island. The Long Island Power Authority began the day saying that 184,000 customers still lacked power. By the end of the day, the total had climbed to 193,000.

About 185,000 Public Service Electric & Gas customers in New Jersey had no power before the new storm arrived. The company said the storm caused an additional 60,000 power failures statewide. By late Wednesday, Jersey Central Power and Light was reporting more than 189,000 customers without electricity.

About 6:40 p.m., the Long Island Rail Road temporarily suspended departures from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn after a series of storm-related problems on several of its lines. But later, limited service was restored.

The storm also snarled traffic in some areas, particularly along the Taconic State Parkway in Putnam and Westchester counties, where the state police said there had been multiple accidents.

American and United Airlines canceled flights Wednesday evening from and to the New York area because of the storm, according to airport officials.

American scratched its 6:25 p.m. flight to LaGuardia Airport, while United scrapped its 7:09 p.m. trip to Newark Liberty International Airport. Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport officials asked that fliers who have scheduled flights to the New York area contact their airlines for the latest schedule information today.

Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field in Little Rock doesn’t offer any nonstop flights to the New York area.

As snow from the nor’easter made roads slippery and sloppy, the police said the death toll in New York City from the hurricane had risen to 41 with the death of William McKeon, 78.

Paul Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said McKeon was foundTuesday “at the bottom of a pitch-black stairwell that was still wet and covered with sand” in Queens. His head was bleeding and he was unconscious and unresponsive, Browne said, adding that the medical examiner’s office determined Wednesday that McKeon’s injuries were storm-related.

The nor’easter was another storm with an impossible-tomiss footprint on the weather maps. Its white swirl, smaller than the hurricane’s, looked ferocious. Road crews feared it would stir up annoying slush and, later on, treacherous ice to hard-luck places where debris from the hurricane was still being cleared away.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that low-lying areas had survived high tide Wednesday afternoon without being inundated all over again, and a National Weather Service forecaster, David Stark, said the high tide had “come in under what we had initially expected, which is a good thing.”

But the mayor and other officials remained concerned about areas the hurricane had walloped. “The difference” between last week and this week, Bloomberg said, “is the barriers of sand or rock that were there before are not there.”

The weather service’s coastal flood warning for New York Harbor remained in effect as the nor’easter gained force, as did a wind warning for the city, Long Island and coastal Connecticut. But Stark said the surprise was the snow. He said 2 inches had been reported in Bayside, Queens, and 31/2 inches in Armonk, N.Y., in Westchester County. He said reports from inland sections of Fairfield County and New Haven County in Connecticut had mentioned 3-5 inches. Later, parts of Westchester reported as much as 7 inches of snow.

“There’s been a pretty good, steady feed of colder air that changed the rain to snow,” he said. “We were thinking there would be warmer air to keep a rain-snow mix, but the colder air and the snow won out.” Information for this article was contributed by Andy Newman, Sarah Maslin Nir, Michael Schwirtz and Daniella Silva of The New York Times and by Lisa Hammersly of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/08/2012