BOSTON (NYTIMES) - Residents across the East Coast were digging out in icy conditions Sunday (Jan 30) after a fierce, wind-packed storm pummelled the region, dumping as much as 76cm of snow in some parts of Massachusetts and snarling travel plans across the North-east.

Snowplow crews were working to get roads, airports and neighbourhoods back to normal.

Heavy snowfall totals were recorded in Boston - which Saturday tied its single-day snowfall record with 60cm, according to the National Weather Service. Areas near New York City received nearly 61cm of snow.

As residents emerged Sunday, they found a new complication in much of the region: fast-dropping temperatures that turned snow to ice and made shoveling for long periods potentially dangerous.

Subzero temperatures hit parts of Massachusetts and Maine early Sunday, and wind chills in the Worcester, Massachusetts, area were as low as 16 degrees below zero - so severe that they "could cause frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 30 minutes," the weather service warned.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled early Sunday, mostly in the Boston and New York areas, according to website FlightAware, which tracks flight cancellations.

La Guardia Airport and Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey all said that they were mostly back to normal operations Sunday, but on Twitter they advised people to allow for extra travel time Sunday and Monday as regular travel ramped up again.

Just as one part of the country was recovering from a winter storm, an area spanning the Midwest into the Northeast was expecting another winter storm this week.

Although it was unclear Sunday precisely what path the storm system would take, meteorologists at the Chicago office of the weather service reported that the storm could bring ice and snow to the Rocky Mountains and move northeast through Missouri, Illinois, the Great Lakes region and a part of the Eastern Seaboard.