Meteorologists have a word to describe the snow, rain, thunderstorms and wind that hit southeastern Connecticut.

A bomb.

Wednesday's storm, while not technically a blizzard, was instead a "classic scenario" of a weather phenomenon called bombogenesis, said Gil Simmons, meteorologist for Channel 8. A bombogenesis is a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure - 24 millibars or more - in 24 hours.

"When a storm 'bombs out,' " Simmons said, "the pressure drops dramatically over a short time."

Wednesday's storm was energized, the result of a storm barreling in from the Midwest and merging with one from the South: bitter cold air colliding with warmer air from the Gulf Stream.

"When you get thunderstorms with snow, that's a heck of a process," Simmons said. "It's kind of like saying you need this electric jolt to get this process going. It was pretty maxed out right over us."

If not for the New London area warming up to about 34 degrees and experiencing rain Wednesday morning, southeastern Connecticut would have seen another 5 to 8 inches of snow or more. One inch of rain typically equals 10 inches of snow, Simmons said, and cold temperatures add a "fluff factor" that can stretch that ratio even further.

"You lost a lot of accumulation because it fell as rain," Simmons said of southeastern Connecticut.

Just the same, the more than a foot of snow kept most people home shoveling out but off the roads as officials had hoped.

Wednesday evening, in a final briefing for the media from the Emergency Operations Center at the William A. O'Neill Armory in Hartford, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy thanked state citizens for "heeding our warnings" and largely staying off roads and highways during the storm.

The governor also offered "a special shout-out to the folks in the trucking industry" who had agreed to keep tractor-trailers largely off the state's highways during the height of the storm.

The state was still tallying final snowfall to see if the totals were close enough to record accumulations to trigger reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Records were broken, Malloy said, in Fairfield, Litchfield, Hartford, New Haven and Tolland counties.

"We will do a little accounting work with FEMA," the governor said.

Hunkering down

Early Wednesday, East Lyme First Selectman Paul Formica drove his 4-by-4 truck to Town Hall, which was open with limited staffing, but he urged others to stay home.

"It's good day to hunker down and watch a good movie," he said.

Officials in area towns reported few cars on the roads during the worst of the storm, and police didn't report any serious accidents.

"I think people were actually smart, and they stayed home," Old Saybrook police Sgt. Kevin Roche said. "The only people out on the road were the police, snowplows. … It gave the plows a chance to clean up the roads."

In Old Lyme, Emergency Management Director David Roberge said few people were out on the roads.

"Pretty much everything in Old Lyme is passable," Roberge said. "By [Thursday] morning, they should be asphalt, curb to curb."

Because so much snow fell in a short amount of time, plows had trouble keeping roads clear. Interstate 95 for most of the day was down to one partially cleared lane and cars were held to 25 mph. Drivers sometimes found blocked exit and entrance ramps. Secondary roads in some towns weren't cleared until much later in the day.

A shelter in Norwich never opened, however, and things were so quiet at the Stonington emergency operations center that it closed at 2 p.m.

Not exactly spared, but ...

In New London County, the snowfall ranged from 18.5 inches in Colchester by 11 a.m. to 13 inches in Niantic by 7:30 a.m.

The state's other counties got hit harder. New Fairfield, Newtown, Danbury and North Haven were among the towns that had more than 2 feet of snow by Wednesday morning.

"In Danbury, it's getting close to blowing away the Blizzard of '78 because it's close to 2 feet," said Bill Jacquemin, chief meteorologist at the Connecticut Weather Center in Danbury. "And that (1978) took two days. This is not even a day."

Despite appearing worse than last month's blizzard, Wednesday's storm did not classify as such, Jacquemin said.

For the storm to be a blizzard, three hours' worth of winds of 35 mph is required, with heavy, blowing snow that reduces visibility.

"We didn't have them paired together," Jacquemin said. "Because they're going to be separated, we're getting all of the ingredients coming in separate parts."

Jacquemin said the snow started at about 9 p.m. Tuesday, dumping 2 feet in under 12 hours.

By about 6 a.m. Wednesday, he said, Stonington had about 8½ inches of snow, and Ledyard and Groton had 7 inches.

DOT spokesman Kevin Nursick said the timing of the storm, hitting overnight rather than during the workday, helped crews to plow. "The timing of the storm thus far has helped us to stay on top of the roads," he said Wednesday morning.

Conditions worsened during what would normally have been the morning commute, however.

"For a little while we were getting some mix and then some rain," Joe Sastre, Groton's emergency management director, said Wednesday morning. "Now we're getting some snow, and it's starting to blow. And because of that rain, everything is icing up. So the roads are worse now than they were three or four hours ago."

Plows were out in Groton starting at about 11 p.m. on Tuesday, Sastre said. "They were able to stay out ahead of the snow for the most part, even though it was coming down at 3 inches an hour for some parts of the night," he said.

Problem in Pawcatuck

Stonington First Selectman Ed Haberek said plow crews were scheduled to work until about 10 p.m. Wednesday to continue clearing roads, especially in Pawcatuck. While most streets were passable Wednesday, mechanical problems with four plows set back the effort in Pawcatuck.

Haberek said highway department employees, who had been working since Tuesday night, went home to sleep Wednesday night and were slated to return about 5 this morning to make sure roads were clear for commuters and school buses.

The school system will have a 90-minute delay this morning and there will be no morning preschool.

With snow piling up on street corners and sidewalks in downtown Pawcatuck and Mystic, Haberek said crews would work overtime tonight and possibly Friday night to remove the snow with bucket loaders and dump trucks. He said there currently is no place left to put snow, and that would be a problem because another storm is forecast for Saturday.

In Stonington borough, Warden Donald Maranell said highway employees Sue Cordero and Roger Collelo, who had been working since 9 p.m. Tuesday, went home late Wednesday afternoon and were scheduled to return at 4 this morning to continue the cleanup operation.

Maranell said a contractor will be in the village this morning to help remove all the snow along Water Street from the viaduct to Cannon Square and stockpile it in the parking lot at Stonington Point. He said the sidewalks that surround Wadawanuck Square would also be cleared.

Storm's last dance

By 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, the heavy snowfall had ceased in New London and the remaining falling flakes danced through the air.

In Preston, road foreman Bob Boyd looked forward to ending an almost 19-hour shift Wednesday evening. "We're trying to get the snow pushed back, but a lot of it is so high we can't push it back the way we wanted to," he said.

At 6 p.m., after coating the roads with a sand-and-salt mixture, Boyd said he and the other public works employees would try to catch some shut-eye until at least 3 a.m. this morning. He's heading out again this morning to resand the roads and to push back the snow mounds that wouldn't budge Wednesday.

With more than 16 inches of snow across the town's roads, Boyd credited the residents for staying in their homes. "I've never seen so little traffic on Route 2 before. It was unbelievable," he said.

Preston's neighbor, Griswold, received more than 18 inches, said road Superintendent Todd Babbitt. "It was coming down quicker than what we could keep up with, but I think we were in pretty good shape," he said Wednesday afternoon.

For public works crews in North Stonington, the afternoon pause in the snowfall was cause enough for "a light at the end of the tunnel feeling," road foreman Steve Holliday said.

"We thought we were going to be able to get ahead of it a little bit, and then it started to snow again," he said, adding that there were at least one or two bands of snow to come through by the end of the night.

Power outages also increased during the morning hours.

"We've had some scattered reports of heavier, wet snow along the shoreline," said CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross. "And of course we've had some reports of strong wind gusts."

Gross said he had an unofficial report of a 50 mph-plus wind gust by the Groton Lighthouse.

In New London and Waterford, about 1,000 customers were without power because of an issue near Bank Street and Boston Post Road. It was not immediately clear what caused the outage.

Waterford First Selectman Daniel Steward said Town Hall, which had just a skeleton crew working during the storm, lost power for nearly two hours Wednesday.

"I kept busy on my cell phone," Steward said.

Back to business

Malloy said Wednesday evening that state workers would return to their jobs as scheduled today, with the exception of some Department of Transportation work crews who were staggered to allow some to rest Wednesday night before returning to clear roads before the morning rush today. "Connecticut will be open for business [today]," Malloy said. "We're confident of that."

k.crompton@theday.com

Day staff writers Jenna Cho, Stephen Chupaska, Matt Collette, Claire Bessette, Ted Mann, Joe Wojtas and Julianne Hanckel contributed to this report.