U.S. snowstorm blankets East amid forecast questioning

New Englanders savaged by a blizzard packing knee-high snowfall and hurricane-force winds began digging out as New Yorkers and others spared its full fury questioned whether forecasts were overblown.

The storm buried the Boston area in more than 61centimetres of snow and lashed it with howling winds that exceeded 113 km/h. It punched a gaping hole in a seawall and swamped a vacant home in Marshfield, Mass., and flipped a 34-metrereplica of a Revolutionary War ship in Newport, R.I., snapping its mast and puncturing its hull.

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"I had to jump out the window because the door only opens one way," Chuck Beliveau said in the hard-hit central Massachusetts town of Westborough. "I felt like a kid again. When I was a kid, we'd burrow through snow drifts like moles."

But signs of normalcy emerged: Flights were to resume at dawn Wednesday at Logan International Airport, among the nation's busiest air hubs, and Boston's public transit and Amtrak trains to New York and Washington were set to roll again.

NYC forecast falls short

Bitter cold threatened to complicate efforts to clear clogged streets and restore power to more than 15,000 customers shivering in the dark, including the entire island of Nantucket. A 126 km/h wind gust was reported there, and a 116 km/h one on neighbouring Martha's Vineyard.

The low in Boston on Wednesday was expected to be -12 C, with a wind chill of -21 C. Forecasters warned that it won't get above freezing for a week.

The Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor of more than 35 million people had braced for a paralyzing blast Monday evening and into Tuesday after forecasters warned of a storm of potentially historic proportions.

The weather lived up to its billing in New England and on New York's Long Island, which also got clobbered.

In the New York City area, the snowfall wasn't all that bad, falling short of 30 centimetres. By Tuesday morning, buses and subways were starting to run again, and driving bans there and in New Jersey had been lifted.

The glancing blow left forecasters apologizing and politicians defending their near-total shutdown on travel. Some commuters grumbled, but others sounded a better-safe-than-sorry note and even expressed sympathy for the weathermen.

National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini said his agency should have done a better job of communicating the uncertainty in its forecast. But he also said the storm may in fact prove to be one of the biggest ever in some parts of Massachusetts.

2 Long Island deaths tied to storm

Around New England, snowplows struggled to keep up, and Boston police drove several dozen doctors and nurses to work at hospitals. Snow blanketed Boston Common, where the Redcoats drilled during the Revolution, and drifts piled up against Faneuil Hall, where Samuel Adams agitated for rebellion against the British.

More than 58 centimetres of snow coated Boston's Logan Airport by Tuesday night, while Worcester got 66 centimetres and Auburn and Lunenburg each reported 91 centimetres.

Providence, R.I., got 43 centimetres. Forty-one centimetres piled up in Portland, Maine, and 84 centimetres in Thompson, Conn. Montauk, on the eastern end of Long Island, got about 61 centimetres.

Two deaths, both on Long Island, were tied to the storm by police: a 17-year-old who crashed into a light pole while snow-tubing down a street and an 83-year-old man with dementia who was found dead in his backyard.

While Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey had been warned they could get 30 to 61 centimetresof snow, New York City received just under 25 centimetres and Philadelphia a mere three centimetres or so. New Jersey got up to 25 centimetres.

National Weather Service forecaster Gary Szatkowski, of Mount Holly, New Jersey, tweeted an apology: "You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn't."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended his statewide ban on travel as "absolutely the right decision to make," given the dire forecast. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city will look at whether storm procedures could be improved but added: "You can't be a Monday morning quarterback on something like the weather."

The blizzard posed a test for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who took office three weeks ago, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who just finished his first year in office.

With the storm drawing near, the governor banned all non-essential travel, and the mayor ordered city schools closed for two days.

"So far, so good," Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry said. "What's important for a governor or a mayor is to appear to be in charge and to have a plan to finish up the job and to get the city and the state back to work."