Northeast crawls back to work

Massachusetts' snowfall hit 38 inches in some cities.
DENNIS, Mass. (AP) -- Snowdrifts 6 feet high kept some Massachusetts residents trapped in their homes and commuters across the Northeast limped back to work on icy roads and packed trains Monday as the region struggled to dig out from a paralyzing weekend blizzard.
Massachusetts saw the most snow -- a whopping 38 inches in cities north and south of Boston. As much as 21 inches of snow blanketed parts of New Jersey, where the morning commute was crippled by delays of more than an hour.
"We are not happy people," said Colleen Neiman, who was inching her way toward an internship in Manhattan. "All the trains are messed up. My train was an hour late. They're not going to be too happy with me at work."
Cities to the south of Boston got heavy, wet snow that that turned to ice in single-digit overnight weather, creating problems on Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, where scattered power outages persisted and roads remained unplowed Monday afternoon.
Many residents in the area were stuck at home because towns had abandoned plowing efforts while wind piled the heavy snow into gigantic drifts. People in the coastal town of Scituate south of Boston couldn't get into their homes because of shore flooding that turned to ice.
Trapped
Bruce MacNayr, 46, was trapped in his home in South Dennis for 24 hours before plows reached him Monday afternoon.
"It's the most snow I've ever seen in my life," MacNayr said. "I've seen a couple of blizzards in my lifetime, but this is the worst."
A state of emergency remained in effect for Massachusetts, but Gov. Mitt Romney ordered state employees to return to work Tuesday after giving nonessential personnel the day off on Monday. Most Rhode Island government workers also got the day off.
After a weekend in which flights were grounded from New England to Chicago, Boston's Logan International Airport reopened Monday after a 30-hour storm shutdown. But then it was hit by an hour-long power outage that shut down elevators and escalators.
School closings were reported Monday from Virginia to Maine.
About 20 deaths were believed linked to the weather, including two in Massachusetts.
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