Northeast blizzard 2015: New England digs out of heavy snow

New England residents are digging out after up to 36in of snow fell in a day-long blizzard.

The Northeast snow storm, which also destroyed part of a seawall and flooded parts of coastal Massachusetts, is being blamed for two deaths in Long Island.

Clean-up is being hindered by freezing temperatures in the coming days forecast to be as low as 10F.

However, New York City and areas south were spared from an earlier prediction of a “potentially historic blizzard”.

New York City officials imposed a driving ban and took the unprecedented step of shutting the subway on Monday evening but less than a foot of snow fell overnight.

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio denied he had overreacted to warnings, saying he could only go on information available and would rather err on the side of safety

The National Weather Service (NWS) has admitted its forecasts were wrong, saying the storm moved faster than they expected.

National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini said his agency should have done a better job of communicating the uncertainties in the forecast.

In Massachusetts, heavy snow – falling as fast as four inches an hour – and high winds combined to created blizzard and white-out conditions.

More than 24in of snow coated Boston’s Logan Airport, the sixth-highest in recorded history. Worcester got 33.5in, the highest amount recorded since 1905, and Auburn and Lunenburg each reported 36in.

More than two feet fell in parts of Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.

Portland, Maine and Providence, Rhode Island both set a daily record for snowfall.

A 110-ft replica of a Revolutionary War ship in Newport, Rhode Island was damaged after the storm flipped it. Wind gusts were as high as 78mph.

On January 28, Boston’s transport system began running again and the first flight since January 26 took off from Logan Airport.

Snowploughs struggled to clear the roads, and Boston police drove several dozen doctors and nurses to work at hospitals.

Further south, the eastern tip of Long Island saw as much as 30in of snow.

Police have connected two deaths there with the snow – a 17-year-old who crashed into a lamp post while in an inflatable tube and an 83-year-old with dementia found dead in his backyard.

The storm also caused coastal flooding in Massachusetts. High tides breached a sea wall and damaged 11 homes in Marshfield, 30 miles south of Boston.

Massachusetts’ only nuclear power station shut down after the blizzard interrupted its power flow.

Thousands of people are still without power, many of them in Massachusetts.

Governor Charlie Baker said the snow had been “fluffier and lighter”, meaning there were fewer power outages than anticipated.