Spiro Mitrakis, the owner of the Purple Steer Restaurant in Whiting, said that was not unusual to see.

“To each his own, I guess,” he said.

Mr. Mitrakis said the area had received about three inches of lake-effect snow in the morning, but that the skies and the roads were clear — and frigid — by early afternoon, with temperatures around 17 degrees. “Just another day in the wintertime,” he said.

Farther from Lake Michigan in Valparaiso, Ind., Samantha Minton is a waitress at The Bait Shop, where brunch offerings include foie gras with French toast and a “Wagyu McMuffin.” She said she had yet to see a snowflake on Sunday, and that overall the storm, which delivered only a few inches on Saturday, had been a bit of a disappointment.

“I was really hoping to get snowed in and watch movies and gorge myself on junk food, but that didn’t happen, so here I am at work,” she said.

For many people in Connecticut, binge-watching to ride out the storm would have meant seeing their batteries head for zero along with the temperature. Eversource and United Illuminating, two utility companies in the state, said there were widespread power outages in large part because so much of the storm’s precipitation had come in the form of sleet or freezing rain. Mr. Otto, the Weather Service meteorologist, said the trouble could multiply as the frigid winds pick up.

“Those kind of winds blowing on those power lines and trees that are already stressed from the weight of the ice, I think, is going to be problematic,” he said.

Farther north and farther inland, the storm had mainly dropped snow. As of Sunday morning, the greatest total reported was in Lake Desolation, N.Y., north of Albany and in the southern Adirondack Mountains, where 16 inches fell, Mr. Otto said.