A man walks out of an ocean front house covered in ice during a winter blizzard in Marshfield, Massachusetts January 27.

BOSTON — A blizzard swept past New York City and struck hardest at some 4.5 million people around Boston, dropping nearly three feet of snow in areas and triggering high tides that breached a seawall and forced residents to flee their coastal homes.

The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut lifted travel bans they had imposed a day earlier and New York City’s subway system restarted after being closed for 10 hours, but officials urged people to stay off snow-covered roadways.

The snow was forecast to continue into early Wednesday morning in eastern New England, which could set a new snowfall record in Boston, where 20.8 inches (53 cm) of snow was already on the ground early afternoon, often piled higher by strong winds.

“There are drifts now of four, five and six feet in some places,” Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker told reporters. Boston-area subways would remain closed for at least the rest of the day, Baker said.

Storm-driven coastal flooding added to the state’s woes, with low-lying towns south of Boston seeing flood damage.

High tides breached a seawall in Marshfield, Massachusetts, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Boston, damaging 11 homes, several of which were condemned, police said. Waves were splashing over the damaged seawall by afternoon and local police urged residents of the area to evacuate before the next high tide which hit later that evening. 

The heaviest snowfall was recorded outside Boston, with 32.5 inches (83 cm) reported in Auburn, Massachusetts, and 30 inches (76.2 cm) reported in Framingham.

Authorities were also working to restore power at the resort island of Nantucket, off Massachusetts, where most homes and businesses had lost power early in the day.

Some 45,900 customers across the storm-hit region were without power, according to local utilities, with the bulk of the outages on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod and outlying islands.

Police said a teenager died late on Monday when he crashed into a lamppost on a street where he was snow-tubing in the New York City suburb of Suffolk County, on the east end of Long Island, which saw more than two feet of snow in places.