Stranded motorists wait for a tow truck Thursday on Interstate 84 in East Hartford, Conn. Connecticut is expecting up to 10 inches of snow in the first storm of the season.

Columbia, Conn. ? A wintry storm responsible for deaths in the Midwest blasted the Northeast on Thursday, dumping snow and sleet and clogging some of the nation’s most heavily traveled highways.

Snowfall in the region ranged from 2 inches to just over a foot in some places. The heaviest snowfall was along the Connecticut-Massachusetts-Rhode Island state lines and eastward, said National Weather Service meteorologist Bob Thompson. Thirteen inches was reported in Whitman, Mass.

Schools, businesses and government agencies in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut closed early.

The resulting exodus choked highways and streets. Authorities reported hundreds of mostly minor accidents throughout the region. Some vehicles were stranded along roadways, preventing plows from getting through.

Susan Randolph, of Bolton, Conn., said it took her an hour to make her normal 20-minute commute from her job at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

“A lot of drivers seem to have forgotten their snow driving skills,” she said.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s vehicle got stuck in the mess, crawling along the highway at 5-10 mph for two hours from Suffield to Hartford in what should have been a 30-minute drive.

“Stay home,” she advised. “Go home, prop your feet up, watch the news.”

While the traffic crawled along the interstates, it also slowed at Northeast airports.

There were delays up to three hours for arriving flights at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, where more than 200 flights had been canceled by late afternoon, officials said.

Elsewhere, Boston’s Logan International reported more than 100 flights canceled, as did Bradley International near Hartford. No major problems were reported at New York’s airports; some airlines allowed passengers to reschedule their flights for free.

The storm has been blamed for at least 36 deaths, mostly in traffic accidents, since it developed last weekend.

A 23-year-old woman died Thursday morning when her pickup truck skidded and flipped over on a snowy highway in Waverly, N.Y., 74 miles southwest of Syracuse. Jessica Rose Nash was partially ejected despite wearing a seat belt.

Crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people left in the dark in the storm’s ice-coated wake.

Sunshine and milder temperatures on Thursday helped cleanup efforts in much of the Plains, but another winter storm approaching from the west could dump heavy snow on parts of the region today.

Connecticut state police said portions of several highways had to be closed in part because motorists abandoned their vehicles in the travel lanes.

Along the shoreline in Milford, Conn., sleet and hail turned the roads to sheets of ice.

Ken Johnson, who was stopped at a Milford gas station, was hoping for even more snow. The 50-year-old arborist said he relies on snow plowing for his income in the winter.

“I’m waiting for the people to start calling,” he said. “I like the summertime; money grows on trees for me. God, let it snow more.”

In Albany, N.Y., snowy roads slowed traffic to a crawl. “People are crazy. … They’re still shopping,” said Kay McIntyre, shoveling a sidewalk in suburban Colonie as cars inched into a nearby mall parking lot.

In Rhode Island, two dozen school districts closed early, as did companies and state agencies in Providence. The workers’ exodus and the snow choked streets in the capital city.