Much of the Northeast is still digging out of this weekend’s big blizzard, which record-keepers now say was one of the five largest in New England history. Hamden, Connecticut, ended up with the storm’s highest snowfall: 40 inches. Portland, Maine, broke its own snowfall record with 31.9 inches; Boston received 24.9 inches, while Commack, Long Island, got 29.1. Around 350,000 people were still without power on Sunday morning, and nine deaths — one of which was in New York — have been blamed on incidents related to the snowstorm.
Getting around the region is still difficult. Though all of the major airports — including Boston’s Logan International — have resumed service, rescheduling the 5,000 flights canceled because of the weather could take days. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick lifted the state’s emergency driving ban on Saturday afternoon, though Boston’s public transportation was still down on Sunday morning. An MBTA spokesman said that crews were working to clear subway platforms, tracks, and bus stops in time for Monday’s commute. Waves off of Cape Cod and Boston’s South Shore reached twenty feet during the storm, resulting in breached seawalls that left roads in Gloucester, Marblehead, and Revere flooded and impassable.
New York is still struggling to clear a now-closed stretch of the Long Island Expressway where hundreds of drivers were stranded on Friday night and Saturday. Governor Cuomo described the effort — which involves 600 pieces of snow removal equipment and 1,000 extra workers — as “the largest emergency mobilizations for a snowstorm in state history.” Saturday and Sunday’s nice weather have made the situation tougher, as the snow melted by the sun has turned into a thick crust of ice. But we won’t have to worry about that for very long: It’s supposed to start raining on Monday.
