Even as a major storm made its way out, a smaller system brought new snow Wednesday to eastern states.
The flurries were expected to add up throughout the day to as much as 4 inches across parts of Indiana, Michigan and New York. Other states in the region could see between 1 and 3 inches by early evening.
On Tuesday, hundreds of schools were closed and crews worked to clear slush and ice from highways following the latest in a series of snowstorms to batter the Northeast this winter.
A foot of snow hit cities in southeastern Massachusetts, where a January storm buried some towns under 6-foot-tall drifts. A foot also was possible by Wednesday morning in parts of Maine, New York and Pennsylvania.
The storm, dubbed a nor'easter, marked the third snowfall in the Northeast in a week.
“I’m sick to death of it, I can’t deal with it, it’s too much,” 23-year-old Charlene Hylton groaned as she waited for a bus Tuesday in Rochester, N.Y.
Boston had a season total of 78.1 inches of snow by Tuesday, compared with an average annual snowfall of about 42 inches. The record is 107.6 inches, set in 1995-1996.
Schools were closed from North Carolina to Maine, where state government workers in Augusta also were told to stay home.
Boston weighs school on Saturday
Boston schools had used up all of their allotted snow holidays and spokesman Jonathan Palumbo said the school year will now go right up to June 30. Any more snow days, he said, and the district will have to make them up, possibly by holding Saturday classes or continuing into July.
Michael Fedorouk, 11, and Darkeem Kelow, 13, were happy to have Tuesday off to sled and skate but neither liked the prospect of Saturday or summer classes.
“On Saturdays, we always have games. I don’t want to go to school on a Saturday. I might miss my games, and he might miss his football games,” Fedorouk said.
“It’s horrible out there,” Massachusetts State Trooper Jonathan Brown said Tuesday morning at Shelburne Falls, in the foothills of the Berkshires.
Air disruptions
Along with highways, air travel also was affected by the storm. New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Newark airports all saw cancelations and delays Tuesday and Monday.
In Maine, hundreds of businesses closed for the day Tuesday, and state government workers in Augusta were told to stay home. Downtown Portland seemed like a ghost town because a parking ban in effect until noon left streets deserted.
The combination of wind, wet snow and ice also caused power outages. The utility NStar said about 3,800 customers were blacked out in eastern Massachusetts.
Nearly 12,000 homes and businesses went dark in North Carolina but more than half were back in service early Tuesday, utility officials said. Others were briefly without power in scattered areas from West Virginia to Maine.