Snow follows Sandy along US seaboard

However, the latest storm did not bring a feared wave of flooding.

“My son had just got his power back two days ago now along comes this nor’easter and it’s out again,” Mark Fendrick, of New York City’s Staten Island, tweeted.

Households in the country’s most densely populated region that had waited for days without power after Superstorm Sandy were plunged back into darkness, with temperatures near freezing.

Exhausted residents remained stoic.

“Things are not worse, and for that I am thankful,” said Iliay Bardash, a Staten Island resident who has been without electricity since last week.

Roads in New Jersey and New York City were clear for the morning commute, and railway lines into New York were running smoothly, despite snow still coming down heavily in some areas.

Parts of battered New Jersey had just over 12 inches of snow overnight.

Residents from Connecticut to Rhode Island saw up to six inches.

In New Jersey, utilities reported about 390,000 power cuts of which about 160,000 were new.

“I am waiting for the locusts and pestilence next,” said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as the storm approached.

Public works crews built up dunes to protect the coast and new shelters opened.

The region’s greatest challenge remains finding emergency housing for tens of thousands of people, in some cases for the long term.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) this week confirmed that 95,000 people in the states of New York and New Jersey alone were eligible for emergency housing assistance.