Boston digs out from blizzard

Boston weathered the sixth largest recorded storm in its recorded history, according to City Hall.

The blizzard, nicknamed Juno, brought a day-and-a-half worth of snow, which meant 24.6 inches of accumulation, according to Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who citedthe National Weather Service.

The MBTA was open for business Wednesday after T service was suspended all day Tuesday. The state’s courts, however, remained closed. Logan flights resumed Wednesday. At least 5,000 utility customers in the state were still without power Wednesday morning.

Gov. Charlie Baker defended his travel ban – where he barred travel in some parts of the state from midnight Monday to midnight Tuesday – saying that all forecasts indicated this was going to be a storm of historic proportions. He said he does not want a travel ban to be the first option “whenever we have a snowstorm.”

“I don’t view this as something you would do except in extreme circumstances,” he said.

Speaking at a noontime press conference, Baker said he was not aware of a single storm-related fatality in Massachusetts.

The storm caused some flooding along the coastline. In Marshfield, the storm damaged several homes near the shoreline and a section of seawall collapsed.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh implored city residents to be patient with snow removal as crews continued to work Wednesday to dig the city out.

“We will get to you,” he said.

Boston Public Works Commissioner Michael Dennehy said he did not have a sense of how many of the city’s streets were still impassable as of 12:15 p.m.

Dennehy said the city would be using two snow melting machines to reduce large drifts and piles of snow in the city. The city’s emergency parking ban ended at 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Walsh, meanwhile, said did not have a cost estimate for the city’s response to the storm.

Asked how he would handle the issue of space savers – where residents shovel out a spot and then reserve it with a chair or other object – the mayor avoided weighing in definitively on the subject.

“We just had a blizzard, I’m not going to say how long the space savers are going to be there,” he said.

While past winters have been filled with stories of arguments and physical altercations over space saving practices in the city, Walsh said he did not foresee it being a problem in the city since many cars are still buried under snow.

He implored Bostonians to treat their neighbors with respect

He added, “This gets blown out of proportion every single year.”