BOSTON (AP) — A howling blizzard with wind gusts over 70 mph heaped snow on the Boston area along with other stretches of lower New England and Long Island on Tuesday but failed to live up to the hype in Philadelphia and New York City, where buses and subways started rolling again in the morning.

In New England, the storm was a bitter, paralyzing blast, while in the New York metro area, it was a bust that left forecasters apologizing, some New Yorkers griping, and officials defending their near-total shutdown on travel.

At least 2 feet of snow was expected in most of Massachusetts, potentially making it one of the top snowstorms of all time. The National Weather Service said a 78 mph gust was reported on Nantucket, and a 72 mph one on Martha's Vineyard.

"It felt like sand hitting you in the face," Bob Paglia said after walking his dog four times overnight in Whitman, a small town about 20 miles south of Boston.

Maureen Keller, who works at Gurney's, an oceanfront resort in Montauk, New York, on the tip of Long Island, said: "It feels like a hurricane with snow."

As of midmorning, the Boston area had about a foot of snow, while the far eastern tip of Long Island had more than 2 feet. Snowplow operators around New England struggled to keep up, and Boston police drove several dozen doctors and nurses to work at hospitals.

"At 4 o'clock this morning, it was the worst I've ever seen it," said Larry Messier, a snowplow driver in Connecticut. "You could plow, and then five minutes later you'd have to plow again."

As the storm pushed into the Northeast on Monday, the region came to a near standstill. More than 7,700 flights were canceled and schools, businesses and government offices closed. But as the storm northward, it tracked farther east than forecasters had been expecting, and conditions improved quickly in its wake.

By midmorning, New Jersey and New York City lifted driving bans, and subways and trains started rolling again, with a return to a full schedule expected Wednesday.

While Philadelphia, New York and New Jersey had braced for a foot or two of snow, they got far less than that. New York City receive about 8 inches, Philadelphia a mere inch or so. New Jersey got up to 8 inches.

A National Weather Service forecaster in Mount Holly, New Jersey, apologized on Twitter for the off-target forecast.

"You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn't. Once again, I'm sorry," Gary Szatkowski tweeted.

Jim Bunker at the agency's office in Mount Holly said forecasters will take a closer look at how they handled the storm and "see what we can do better next time."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended his statewide ban on travel as "absolutely the right decision to make" in light of the dire forecast.

"We were acting based on what we were being told," he said.

In New York City, Susanne Payot, a cabaret singer whose rehearsal Tuesday was canceled, said of the meager snowfall: "I'm just surprised and I'm laughing out loud. This is nothing. I don't understand why the whole city shut down because of this."

The turnaround scrambled business for some.

"It's a huge inconvenience because everybody assumed the day was going to be off," said Philadelphia flooring contractor Chris Diamond who had to come into work after all Tuesday morning.

But Brandon Bhajan, a security guard at a New York city buiilding, said he didn't think officials had overreacted.

"I think it's like the situation with Ebola ... if you over-cover, people are ready and prepared rather than not giving it the attention it needs," he said.

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Lavoie reported from Whitman, Massachusetts. Associated Press writers Mark Pratt and William J. Kole in Boston; Michelle R. Smith in Providence; Rhode Island; Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia; Kiley Armstrong, Ula Ilnytzky and Jennifer Peltz in New York City; Michael Melia in South Windsor, Connecticut; Shawn Marsh in Trenton, New Jersey; and Geoff Mulvihill in Haddonfield, New Jersey, contributed to this report.