THE Bradley family on Cedar Place had fun shoveling and climbing a mountain of snow in front of their home. From left: Bob Bradley, Kim Bradley, Paige Bradley and Corinne Bradley.

THE Bradley family on Cedar Place had fun shoveling and climbing a mountain of snow in front of their home. From left: Bob Bradley, Kim Bradley, Paige Bradley and Corinne Bradley.

By BOB BURGESS

WAKEFIELD — Snow began falling here, however lightly, early Monday afternoon. When it was over around 5:30 this morning — after the rage and fury of a significant, classic nor’easter — Wakefield had received 29 inches that rested on top of nearly six more that fell over the weekend.

The blizzard brought the town and all communities in eastern Massachusetts to an almost complete standstill. Virtually all businesses were closed, school was cancelled for two days, the streets were barren Tuesday of everything except hard-swirling, wind-blown flakes and the plow operators charged with removing them and when residents finally began the cleanup process, they encountered knee-high drifts or worse.

Getting around this morning was much easier than yesterday and, according to DPW Director Richard Stinson, it was only possible because of the work done by this men and that of private plow contractors, many of whom worked at least 30 hours straight.

If you count the mellow beginning of the storm Monday afternoon and this morning’s tapering end, the blizzard lasted 39 hours.

DPW crews reported to work as usual at 7 a.m. Monday, preparing equipment and materials for the well-forecasted nor’easter. They also began pre-treating streets up until 3 p.m. All members of the DPW reported to work at 5 p.m. Monday and by 5:30 p.m. the roads were being treated with salt.

By 9 p.m., the entire complement of snow removal operators — town and private — began plowing. The blizzard soon ratcheted up in ferocity and crews had all they could handle trying to keep ahead of the drifting snow. Visibility was a problem, as was the fact the wind blew snow back onto streets as soon as they were plowed.

Stinson said three town snow removal pieces went down during the blizzard: A pick up truck with a blown blower motor, a dump truck with a bad plow piston and another vehicle which had its heater fail.

“One of the big issues was the cold,” Stinson explained. “We used two dozen sets of wiper blades because they kept freezing up and the windshields were too. There was a lot of downtime as we tried to get the blades to defrost or had to replace them.”

“The guys were working very hard on very little rest,” Stinson said. “Some of them worked between 30 and 39 hours straight, while some others worked 40 to 48 hours. Everyone on the DPW and all the contractors did an excellent job under some difficult conditions. I can’t thank them enough.”

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And the work isn’t over. Some DPW employees, sent home last night at 11 p.m., were back today at 7 a.m. scraping streets and pushing back snowbanks to widen narrowed roads. After 11 a.m., a larger contingent of workers reported and will help with that work, as well as cutting down the height of snowbanks at intersections. Street corners are extremely dangerous to drivers, who are urged to drive slowly to avoid accidents. The town’s schools will also be prepared for a possible opening tomorrow and the Senior Center lot on Converse Street will be cleared. Within the next few nights, crews will remove snow from the Square, the Greenwood business district and other areas.

Stinson said his department will spend the next week plowing sidewalks, which may factor into a school-no school decision for tomorrow. Yesterday, Supt. of Schools Dr. Stephen K. Zrike said the safety of children, their parents and staff are among the major factors in determining whether to cancel classes.

Rubbish collection was back on today after being suspended Tuesday. Tuesday trash will be collected today, Wednesday trash will be collected tomorrow and so on.

Food service personnel reported for work last night to prepare dinner for contractors, DPW employees, police, Municipal Gas and Light Department employees and other professionals out in the blizzard. Stinson said that meal had originally been planned as a lunch yesterday, but “we couldn’t let anyone stop plowing. That’s how much we had to do,” he added.

A small winter storm may bring a couple more inches of snow Thursday into Friday. A larger storm may be looming Sunday night into Monday.

In addition to trying to clear Wakefield’s streets, the DPW’s Water and Sewer Department put a quick fix on a broken Preston Street water main yesterday and were out to make a full repair today.

The storm buried the Boston area in more than two feet of snow and lashed it with howling winds that exceeded 70 mph. It punched a gaping hole in a seawall and swamped a vacant home in Marshfield and flipped a 110-foot replica of a Revolutionary War ship in Newport, R.I., snapping its mast and puncturing its hull.

“I had to jump out the window because the door only opens one way,” Chuck Beliveau said in the hard-hit central Massachusetts town of Westborough. “I felt like a kid again. When I was a kid, we’d burrow through snow drifts like moles.”

But signs of normalcy emerged: Boston’s public transit was running Wednesday and Amtrak trains to New York and Washington were rolling on a limited schedule. Flights began arriving at Logan International Airport, among the nation’s busiest air hubs, just after 8 a.m.

Bitter cold threatened to complicate efforts to clear clogged streets and restore power to more than 15,000 customers shivering in the dark, including the entire island of Nantucket. A 78 mph wind gust was reported there, and a 72 mph one on neighboring Martha’s Vineyard.

The low in Boston on Wednesday was expected to be 10 degrees, with a wind chill of minus 5. Forecasters warned that it won’t get above freezing for a week.

The Philadelphia-to-Boston corridor of more than 35 million people had braced for a paralyzing blast Monday evening and into Tuesday after forecasters warned of a storm of potentially historic proportions.

The weather lived up to its billing in New England and on New York’s Long Island, which also got clobbered.

In the New York City area, the snowfall wasn’t all that bad, falling short of a foot. By Tuesday morning, buses and subways were starting to run again and driving bans there and in New Jersey had been lifted.

The glancing blow left forecasters apologizing and politicians defending their near-total shutdown on travel. Some commuters grumbled but others sounded a better-safe-than-sorry note and even expressed sympathy for the weathermen.

National Weather Service director Louis Uccellini said his agency should have done a better job of communicating the uncertainty in its forecast. But he also said the storm may in fact prove to be one of the biggest ever in some parts of Massachusetts.

Around New England, snowplows struggled to keep up and Boston police drove several dozen doctors and nurses to work at hospitals. Snow blanketed Boston Common, where the Redcoats drilled during the Revolution, and drifts piled up against Faneuil Hall, where Samuel Adams agitated for rebellion against the British.

More than 24 inches of snow coated Boston’s Logan Airport, the sixth-highest in recorded history. The record is 27.6 inches in 2003. Worcester got 33.5 inches — the highest amount recorded since 1905 — and Auburn and Lunenburg each reported 36 inches.

Burrillville, R.I. got 26.5 inches. More than 20 inches piled up in Portland, Maine, and 33.5 inches in Thompson, Conn. Orient, on the eastern end of Long Island, got about 30 inches.

Two deaths, both on Long Island, were tied to the storm by police: a 17-year-old who crashed into a light pole while snow-tubing down a street and an 83-year-old man with dementia who was found dead in his backyard.

While Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey had been warned they could get 1 to 2 feet of snow, New York City received just under 10 inches and Philadelphia a mere inch or so. New Jersey got up to 10 inches.

National Weather Service forecaster Gary Szatkowski, of Mount Holly, N.J. tweeted an apology: “You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right and we didn’t.”

The blizzard posed a test for Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, who took office three weeks ago, and Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who just finished his first year in office.

With the storm drawing near, the governor banned all non-essential travel and the mayor ordered city schools closed for two days.

“So far, so good,” Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry said. “What’s important for a governor or a mayor is to appear to be in charge and to have a plan to finish up the job and to get the city and the state back to work.”

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Associated Press writers Bob Salsberg, William J. Kole, Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine; Michelle R. Smith in Providence; R.I.; Steve LeBlanc and Sylvia Lee Wingfield in Boston; Amy Crawford in Westborough; Pat Eaton-Robb in Columbia, Conn.; Jennifer Peltz, Kiley Armstrong, Ula Ilnytzky and Verena Dobnik in New York; Shawn Marsh in Trenton, N.J.; Jill Colvin in Jersey City, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, N.J.; and Sean Carlin, Michael Sisak and Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia contributed to this report.