Blizzard howls its way into Boston but largely spares NYC

The Boston area had more than 30cm of snow as snowplow operators around New England struggled to keep up.

A man uses a snowblower to try to dig out a buried car several hours into the blizzard which struck the Northeastern US in Franklin, Massachusetts. Matt Campbell/EPA

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

The storm was a bitter, paralysing blast to New England, with about half a metre of snow in most of Massachusetts, potentially making it one of the top snowstorms of all time there.

A blizzard warning for Boston ended Tuesday evening as the snow tapered off, but one remained in effect for the south coast, Cape Cod and nearby islands.

The area also was dealing with bitter cold: The low in Boston on Wednesday is expected to be -12°C, with wind chill of -20.5°C, and forecasters said it would not get above freezing for the next week or so.

The Boston area had more than 30cm of snow. Snowplow operators around New England struggled to keep up, and Boston police drove several dozen doctors and nurses to work at hospitals.

In New York, forecasters apologised for their predictions of a possible historic storm, and politicians defended their near-total shutdown on travel.

Some residents grumbled about the forecasts being overblown, but others sounded a better-safe-than-sorry note and even expressed sympathy for the weatherman.

Forecasters originally warned the storm could bring up to a metre of snow and punishing hurricane-force winds. But on Tuesday they downgraded most of those numbers, saying Boston and the northeastern New England region would be worst hit, but even then not as bad as expected.

A National Weather Service forecaster in New Jersey apologised on Twitter for the off-target forecast.

“You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry,” Gary Szatkowski tweeted.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie defended his statewide ban on travel as “absolutely the right decision to make” in light of the dire forecast.

As the storm pushed into the Northeast on Monday, the region came to a near standstill, alarmed by forecasters’ dire predictions. More than 7,700 flights were cancelled, and schools, businesses and government offices closed.

As dawn broke, New York City had an almost eerie feel to it. No aeroplanes in the sky and no trains running underground made for an unexpected quiet. A few municipal lorries rumbled down empty streets.

But as the storm pushed northward, it tracked farther east than forecasters had been expecting, and conditions improved quickly in its wake. By midmorning on Tuesday, New Jersey and New York City lifted driving bans, and subways and trains started rolling again, with a return to a full schedule expected on Wednesday.

* Associated Press