Boston: A fierce nor’easter lashed the north-east with hurricane-force winds, heavy snow and widespread power outages and on Wednesday millions of people faced yet another cleanup.

With spring tantalisingly in their grasp after the switch to daylight saving time, many were left shaking their heads — and wielding shovels they had hoped would not be needed again — after the third major storm in two weeks buried some towns beneath 2 feet (0.61 metres) of snow on Tuesday.

“The groundhog was right. Six more weeks of winter, and probably then some,” Paul Knight, of Portland, Maine, said as snow accumulated on his eyebrows.

The National Weather Service said Derry, New Hampshire, got 25 inches (63 centimetres). Burrillville, Rhode Island, and Kezar Falls, Maine, both got 20 inches (51 centimetres).

High winds and blowing snow led meteorologists to categorise the storm as a blizzard in parts of New England, including Boston. Gusts approached 70mph (112km/h) on Cape Cod, the weather service said.

At one point, more than a quarter-million people were without power in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Utility companies said they would have extra crews out on Wednesday to restore power to those still without it.

Amtrak suspended all service on Tuesday between Boston and New York City. The railroad later announced that most service between the two cities would resume on Wednesday.

Road and air travel also was disrupted: Slick roads were blamed for at least one death in North Carolina, and the flight-tracking site FlightAware reported more than 1,500 cancelled flights.

Janice James’ house in Osterville on Cape Cod was in the dark again after losing power for three days in the last storm. James and her four children spent the day eating baked goods she made before the storm and hoping the lights and heat would come back soon.

“We are freezing,” the 39-year-old said.

In Rhode Island, the snow did not stop residents from getting to church. In East Greenwich, the Reverend Bernard Healey said he celebrated noon Mass with “two hearty souls” who came despite the nor’easter.

“If I lost power, we’d [still] celebrate Mass,” Healey said. “We would just use more candles.”

The storm dumped between 8 and 12 inches (20 to 31 centimetres) in Boston, but the wind made it difficult to measure, said Bill Simpson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. New York was expected to get as much as 4 inches, but snow gave way to rain by late morning and the sun was shining by 5pm local time.

The storm — the third nor’easter to rake the north-east this month — impacted travel and markets. Amtrak suspended Northeast Corridor train service between Boston and New York. The price of natural gas to be delivered Wednesday to Boston and other New England cities jumped to the highest since February 12.

Airlines cancelled more than 1,900 US flights Tuesday, mostly in and out of Boston’s Logan International Airport, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. More than 180 were scrubbed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

More than 260,000 homes and businesses were blacked out in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from utility websites.

A March 2 storm knocked out power to more than 2 million people from Ohio to Maine and caused devastating flooding to coastal Massachusetts. Five days later, a second one dropped snow by the foot in New Jersey and across the lower Hudson River Valley.

And this may not be the last winter punch for the region, which also experienced record-high temperatures in February. Some models suggest another storm could come up the East Coast next week.