Like generals fighting the last war, city and state officials throughout Eastern Massachusetts vowed yesterday not to let a medium-sized snowstorm paralyze Boston as a similar storm did Dec. 13.
And by day's end, with hundreds of schools shuttered and thousands of municipal employees kept home, they proved that 8 inches of snow cannot bring Boston to a halt.
To be fair, yesterday's storm followed a much different track. Snow began to fall in the middle of the night before anyone left home for work, giving plowing crews a clean shot at keeping roads clear, rather than landing unexpectedly quickly at midday as commuters scrambled home to beat the Dec. 13 storm, only to wind up getting stuck for up to nine hours.
But if Boston underreacted to December's big storm, by last night's smooth commute home, some were wondering if the city overreacted to this one.
"There's not a soul down here," said Keisha Leslie, manager of the Hip Zepi USA urban clothing store in Downtown Crossing, as she stood in an empty store during what is usually a two-hour lunchtime rush.
But as did other downtown workers, Leslie said she didn't mind officials overestimating how much havoc the storm could have caused. "Snow is snow; you don't know what you'll get," Leslie said.
"I don't think it's an earth-shattering event," said Ben Mastropiere, who left his car at home in Newton and came to work near Post Office Square via the Green Line. "But I think they're handling it right this time."
Mayor Thomas M. Menino had no regrets about the city's decision to declare a snow emergency at midnight, close 144 schools, and order all nonessential city workers to stay home, spokeswoman Dorothy Joyce said.
"You can always look back and sort of Monday-morning-quarterback anything, but if they could all go this smoothly, that's great," Joyce said.
With the heaviest snow at morning rush hour, Joyce said, "we did not want to put students, especially young children, in any kind of public-safety danger during what was a treacherous early morning commute."
Because so many city employees have children in city schools, Joyce said, once the decision was made to cancel school, the mayor decided it only made sense to allow as many parents as possible on the city payroll to stay home with their children. Boston schools, along with hundreds of others around the region that closed for the snow, will reopen today.
Paul Guzzi - chief executive of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, which along with dozens of other Financial District businesses let employees come in late yesterday morning - said his sense was that after a slow morning, many businesses had a reasonably full complement of employees as the day wore on.
"It seemed as if it was a little bit later start, and my sense was by midmorning things had started to return to normalcy," Guzzi said.
The storm was not problem-free. Heavy snow snapped tree limbs that downed power lines and left more than 31,000 Bay State homes without power at times. Despite lighter-than-usual traffic, State Police responded to "a significant number" of spinout accidents, said Lieutenant Eric Anderson.
MBTA service on the Mattapan Trolley Line and the Beacon Street Green Line trolley line west of Coolidge Corner was shut down for several hours because of fallen trees, T spokesman Joe Pesaturo said.
On the commuter rail, one Haverhill-to-Boston trip was delayed for more than 90 minutes, with passengers who waited behind a disabled train finally forced to walk to a replacement train. "No lights, no heat, and roof was leaking, for over an hour," said Anne Mitchell, who works at One Federal Street. "It was a horror show."
At Logan International Airport, airlines wary that delays in Boston could disrupt flight schedules across the country began canceling flights Sunday afternoon, and by day's end more than 100 of the airport's usual 1,100 daily departures and arrivals had been scrubbed.
But last night was the easiest Monday-night commute seen in months by traffic monitors at SmartRoute Systems Inc. in Cambridge, which provides reports for the 511 telephone traffic line. "When no one goes to work, no one has to go home," Jeff Larson, general manager of SmartRoute, said jokingly. With lighter-than-usual traffic volume, Larson said, "the highway crews had the ability to clear the roads."
Noah Bierman, John C. Drake, John R. Ellement, and Martin Finucane of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Peter Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.
