LITTLE ROCK — A midwinter storm buried the Northeast in snow Saturday, leaving behind a debilitated and disoriented region digging out from under towering drifts and reeling from gale-force winds.
From Maine to New York, the storm materialized much as weather forecasters had predicted it would. New York City was spared the worst of the storm, while points to the north and east were hit hard.
Across much of New England, roadways were empty of cars. Snow was waist-high in the mostly empty streets of Boston. Plows made some thoroughfares passable but added to the mounds of snow on top of cars parked along the city’s narrow streets.
More than 3 feet of snow fell in parts of Connecticut, and more than 2 feet accumulated on Long Island and in Massachusetts, causing coastal flooding that forced evacuations of some Massachusetts communities.
Some homeowners awoke Saturday to find snow packed so high that they couldn’t get their doors open.
“It’s like lifting cement. They say it’s 2 feet, but I think it’s more like 3 feet,” said Michael Levesque, who was shoveling snow in Quincy, Mass., as part of a work crew for a landscaping company.
Hundreds of thousands of people shivered without power in biting cold. Wind gusts that eclipsed 80 mph severed power lines and toppled trees.
The storm, spawned by the collision of two weather systems, affected more than 40 million people. Early reports suggested that it was responsible for five deaths.
One young boy who had been shoveling snow with his father in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston died from carbon-monoxide poisoning after he retreated into an idling car to warm up. The car’s exhaust pipe had been blocked by snow.
Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee cautioned Saturday that while the snow had stopped, the danger hadn’t passed. “People need to take this storm seriously, even after it’s over. If you have any kind of heart condition, be careful with the shoveling,” he said.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg expressed relief at a Saturday morning news conference that the city had avoided worse damage and offered to assist the more heavily pounded neighboring states and Long Island, the hardest-hit part of New York state. Most of the roads in the city, he said, were well on the way to being cleared, and he thanked people for staying off the streets during the storm. The snow accumulation in Central Park measured 11.4 inches by daybreak Saturday.
For many areas, “this storm will rank in the top five of recorded snowstorms,” said David Stark, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Suffolk County, Long Island. Outside his office, measurements have been taken since 1949, and this storm beat them all with 30.9 inches.
“The way this evolved was a very classic winter nor’easter,” Stark said. “The way it formed and moved is well understood, and it is the type of situation we have seen in the past - but this storm brought more moisture and therefore more snow.”
The National Weather Service received reports of flooding up and down the eastern coast of Massachusetts, especially in those areas just north and south of Boston. Water carrying slabs of ice sloshed through the streets and lapped against houses. The National Guard was dispatched to assist in evacuations.
Waves off the south shore of Boston and parts of Cape Cod reached as high as 20 feet. Two feet of water was reported in Winthrop, Mass., just north of Boston. Water breached a sea wall in the Humarock section of Scituate, Mass., and roads in Gloucester, Marble head and Revere were reported flooded or impassable.
Some spots in Massachusetts had to be evacuated because of coastal flooding, including Salisbury Beach, where about 40 people were ordered out.
Among them were Ed and Nancy Bemis, who heard waves crashing and rolling underneath their home, which stands on stilts. At one point, Ed Bemis went outside to take pictures, and a high wave blew out their door and knocked down his wife.
At a news conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state would send crews to Connecticut and Massachusetts to help remove snow and restore power.
Some streets in Connecticut resembled ski slopes or mountain passes. People could not open their doors.
With snow still falling Saturday, the weather service said it had reports out of New Haven County, in Connecticut, of 36.2 inches in Oxford and 38 inches in Milford. In Commack, on Long Island, 29.1 inches of snow was reported at 6 a.m. and 27.5 inches at MacArthur Airport in Islip, N.Y. In Boston, where the sun finally broke through about 2 p.m., the accumulation was 24.9 inches, the fifth-highest in city history.
On Long Island, the storm barreled in so quickly Friday night that hundreds abandoned their cars as roads became impassable, even with snowplows working furiously. Scores of cars including tow trucks, tractor-trailer rigs and even county snowplows were strewn about and stuck in the snow along North Ocean Avenue in Long Island’s Brookhaven, which had received 30.3 inches by 6 a.m.
“God was kind last night because it was a terribly dangerous situation,” Cuomo said. “Many people got very lucky.”
Emergencies were declared in five states. The governor of Massachusetts banned travel on all roads as night fell Friday, an order that remained in effect until 4 p.m. Saturday. Gov.Dannel Malloy of Connecticut reported cars stranded across his state, despite orders for drivers to stay off the roads, and said several people needed to be treated for hypothermia after spending hours trapped in their cars.
Coming less than four months after Hurricane Sandy walloped the New York area, weather-anxious residents took this storm seriously. People crowded supermarkets and supply stores to stock up as the storm bore down on the region. Long lines materialized at gas stations.
But without electricity, it was impossible for some to stay home. About 475,000 homes and businesses remained without power late Saturday, down from a total of about 650,000. Officials said it could take days to restore service to some.
Most of the power failures were in Massachusetts, where more than 400,000 homes and businesses were left in the dark. A few hours before midnight Saturday, about 344,000 customers remained without power. In Rhode Island, a peak of about 180,000 customers lost power, or about one-third of the state. By 9 p.m. Saturday, the total was down to 130,000.
Connecticut crews had whittled the number of people without service to 31,000 from a high of about 38,000, and power was restored to nearly all of the more than 15,000 in Maine and New Hampshire who lost service during the storm. On Long Island, about 10,000 customers were reported without electricity, the Long Island Power Authority said, late Saturday.
Marcy Reed, president of National Grid, which supplies power to the Long Island Power Authority, said power failures could last several days because repairs would not begin until the storm ended and would require unearthing power lines buried under mounds of snow.
Instead of dissipating overnight Friday, the storm seemed to gain strength in the Boston area. Saturday morning winds topping 70 mph whipped through some towns and cities, creating snowdrifts and forcing people to stay in their homes and ride it out.
In Massachusetts, National Guard soldiers were deployed, mainly in the southeastern part of the state, to evacuate residents and take them to warming centers and shelters. Even members of the National Guard found themselves trapped in their homes, with only about 2,000 out of more than 5,000 managing to get out.
The National Guard and Worcester, Mass., emergency workers teamed up to deliver a baby at the height of the storm at one family’s home. Everyone was fine.
The U.S. Postal Service closed post offices and suspended mail delivery Saturday in New England.
The Boston Archdiocese released Roman Catholics from their obligation to attend Mass today, saying they should attend only if they could do so safely.
Logan International Airport in Boston was expected to reopen Saturday night, and the three international airports around New York City were working to resume operations. More than 5,000 flights have been canceled since Friday.
Some people managed to make it to work. In Westborough, Mass., Christina’s Cafe opened at 6 a.m. as usual to serve breakfast to snowplow operators. Kim Lupien was the only one of the restaurant’s six waitresses who made it to work. She said she climbed through snowdrifts from her home nearby.
“People expect us to be open, so we’re open,” she said with a shrug. Lupien added that she grew up in snowy Maine: “That’s why it doesn’t affect me much.” Information for this article was contributed by N.R. Kleinfeld, Marc Santora, Jess Bidgood, Robert Davey, Ann Farmer, Dina Kraft, Elizabeth Maker, Eli Rosenberg, Nate Schweber, Michael Schwirtz, Katharine Q. Seelye, Ravi Somaiya, Alex Vadukul and Vivian Yee of The New York Times; and by Michelle R. Smith, Jay Lindsay, David Klepper, Ebony Reed, Karen Matthews, Frank Eltman, Charles Krupa and John Christoffersen of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/10/2013