LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News, I'm Linda Wertheimer. The first major snowstorm of the new year hit the eastern half of the United States, leaving Boston, New York and cities beyond buried in snow. WBUR Boston's Barbara Howard reports on the aftermath.</s>BARBARA HOWARD, BYLINE: Children sledding down a slope in suburban Brookline, Massachusetts. The storm closed schools on Friday, so why not? Fifteen inches of snow recorded at Logan Airport; nearly two feet in other parts of Massachusetts, with scattered blizzard conditions at the height of the storm. It's all a boon for area ski resorts, which have suffered through some relatively snowless winters in recent years. Tom Meyers is marketing director at Wachusett Mountain Ski Area near Boston.</s>TOM MEYERS: This season has actually been off to one of the best starts we have ever had. And we've had incredibly good weather for snow making, and then, of course, when we have a wonderful storm like we just had, it's just icing on the cake.</s>BARBARA HOWARD, BYLINE: The snow was not fun for travelers. Airlines cancelled thousands of flights while the storm intensified Thursday night into Friday. Nancy Tebbetts waited at Boston's Logan Airport. She was trying to get home to Cady, Texas.</s>NANCY TEBBETTS: Well, you know, when travel in the northeast in the winter, you have to be prepared. So it's, you know, a crap shoot. That's one of the reasons we live in Texas now.</s>BARBARA HOWARD, BYLINE: The backlog of flights has been pretty much cleared up now. Logan Airport officials expect things to be back to normal today. South-facing coastal areas of Massachusetts regularly experience flooding during storms at high tide, but perennial worries that beach houses perched on sandy cliffs would fall into the Atlantic proved unfounded. Arctic air with sub-freezing temperatures has now moved into New England. Temperatures are expected to rise above freezing by tomorrow. For NPR News, I'm Barbara Howard in Boston.
Life is getting back to normal in the Northeast as residents finish cleaning up from a major storm that dropped plenty of snow and forced the closure of highways and schools. Thousands of flights were canceled.