BOSTON -- A howling blizzard slammed the Northeast yesterday with more than 2 feet of snow and hurricane-strength wind gusts, halting air travel for thousands of people, keeping others off slippery highways and burying parked cars under deep drifts.

Governors in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island declared states of emergency.

Up to 31 inches of snow fell north of Boston, parts of New Hampshire got 2 feet, New York's Catskills collected at least 20 inches and 18 inches fell on parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island and the eastern tip of New York's Long Island. New York City received between 12 and 18 inches.

The weather system had earlier piled a foot of snow across parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and northern Ohio.

In addition to the snow, temperatures were expected to reach zero in some areas last night, with wind chills dropping as low as minus 15. The wind was fierce across much of the East Coast, with a top wind gust of 152 mph recorded on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina.

At least 13 deaths were linked to the weather: three in Connecticut, three in Ohio, three in Wisconsin, two in Pennsylvania, one in Maryland and one in Iowa.

Wind gusted to 84 mph on Nantucket, and the entire island off the southeast coast of Massachusetts was plunged into darkness yesterday as 9,400 utility customers lost power. On the mainland, some 18,000 customers lost power, the utility NStar said. Smaller outages were reported elsewhere around the Northeast.

Elise DelBarone, a spokeswoman for Massachusetts Electric, said power on Nantucket was nearly restored yesterday afternoon when a problem with the undersea cable connecting the island to the mainland was fixed.

Still, officials said up to 100 residents were staying at a shelter set up at a high school. Rescue crews were also trying to reach people at risk in outlying areas cut off by snow drifts up to 6 feet high.

Because the wind blowing off the ocean coincided with a full moon and high tide, coastal communities were warned of flooding.

"There's a lot of self-evacuations going on. People simply got out of Dodge," said Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. National Guard troops helped evacuate part of Scituate, 20 miles south of Boston, but morning high tide receded without significant flooding, he said.

Boston's Logan International Airport closed early yesterday because snowplow crews couldn't keep up with the blinding snow.

More than 900 flights were canceled yesterday morning at the New York metropolitan area's Newark, Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, in addition to about 700 that were grounded Saturday, Port Authority officials said.

Philadelphia's airport was open again yesterday, after a shutdown and flight cancellations on Saturday stranded hundreds of travelers at the terminal overnight, but more than 70 departures were canceled.