Snow was still falling during the early morning hours Wednesday in Ashby, Massachusetts, one of the areas hit hardest by this week's nor'easter storm that howled into New England.
Ashby recorded an impressive 30 inches of snowfall, and nearly 1,500 people there remained without power Wednesday morning.
A state of emergency was declared in the town on Tuesday, when fire officials said that many roads were impassable due to fallen trees, downed wires and deep snow. The town's Emergency Operations Center was activated, and the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency was helping the town with additional resources.
"It is heavy, wet and heavy," one local named Steve said about the snow. "I've seen... two-foot storms, 27-inch storms, but this one was really pasty, really sticky and it just kept going on."
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Kelly McCuster, who didn't have power Wednesday, called the storm "crazy."
"Even just a couple towns away, only have a couple inches, but we have all of this, and no power with a house full of kids," McCuster said.
Clean up was underway across the region Wednesday morning after the storm, which dropped up to three feet of snow in some communities, and barely left a coating in others.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation said at one point Wednesday morning that it had over 1,000 pieces of equipment deployed in storm operations. A speed restriction of 40 mph remained in place on the Massachusetts Turnpike from the New York state line to Millbury, but was eventually lifted later in the morning. Crews in Wrentham were working on repairs after utility wires came down on Route 140, closing the state road going both directions.
Ashby was far from the only community that was dealing with widespread outages stretching into Wednesday. MEMA was reporting over 30,000 customers without power in Massachusetts as of around 6 a.m. Wednesday, a number that had been fluctuating throughout the morning, but still much lower than the number of outages seen during the height of the storm on Tuesday.
Crews have asked that people without power exercise patience, as they work to make repairs. A staging area was set up in Leominster, where crews were seen before dawn as they prepared to move out.
Along the coast, big waves were seen crashing into the seawall in Marshfield, where there was some splash over and minor pockets of flooding. No major issues were reported, though, overnight.
School Closings Wednesday
A number of school districts across New England have canceled or delayed class, or opted for remote learning on Wednesday, following the nor'easter. An updated list of school cancellations and delays can be found here.
Latest on Power Outages
As of around 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, there were still over 30,000 people in Massachusetts who were without power, in addition to thousands more in other New England states.
Snowfall Totals Across the Region
Some areas of New England saw considerable snowfall — up to three feet of it — while others barely got a coating.
