Cities across the north-east US are digging out from the snow after Monday’s blizzard, which halted travel across the region and caused hundreds of thousands of power outages.
Meteorologists said that the storm was the strongest in a decade, dumping more than 2ft (61cm) of snow in parts of the region. More than 3ft (91cm) fell in Rhode Island – surpassing snow totals from the north-east’s historic blizzard of 1978.
The storm was set to move away from the east coast on Tuesday, heading up to the Canadian Maritime provinces, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
In Massachusetts, there were still more than 250,000 power outages as of 10am ET on Tuesday. The state’s governor, Maura Healey, had lifted a blizzard-related state of emergency for Berkshire, Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties, though it remained in effect for all other state counties.
She also signed a directive allowing non-emergency state employees to work from home on Tuesday and encouraged employers to let their workers do the same, in an effort to keep the roads open for clearing crews and power restoration workers.
“While the worst of the storm is behind us and much of the state is turning to shoveling out, conditions remain severe and dangerous across south-eastern Massachusetts,” Healey said in a press release.
In an unprecedented move, the Boston Globe announced on Monday that it would not have a print version of the newspaper out for delivery on Tuesday. The publication wrote that the heavy snow conditions “prevented the paper’s printing staff from safely getting to Taunton, now the home of the Globe printing press”.
Travel bans in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware had been lifted by Tuesday.
In New York City, students were back in the classroom on Tuesday after a rare snow day on Monday. During a news conference prior to Tuesday’s return to classes, the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, preemptively acknowledged students’ disappointment, telling them: “You can still pelt me with snowballs when you see me.”
It wasn’t just students who were disappointed, however. The president of the United Federation of Teachers, Michael Mulgrew, said the union would ensure that teachers who could not make the commute to school did not face any disciplinary action. “No one should jeopardize their safety trying to report to work,” he said in a social media post.
As parents and caregivers trudged through snowbanks and refrozen ice to bring their children to school, some expressed frustration with the mayor’s decision.
“We’re walking on thin ice here,” Danielle Obloj, the parent of a Brooklyn fifth-grader, told the Associated Press. “One more day would’ve been fine.
“They should never have let these kids come back to school.”
Across the north-east, transit is slowly coming back to life. The Long Island Rail Road is operating on a limited schedule on Tuesday, in part thanks to its deployment of a 53ft, 80-ton spreader-ditcher machine used for heavy-duty snow removal. The powerful machine – nicknamed Darth Vader – is capable of clearing snow drifts up to 15ft deep.