A gigantic midwinter storm buried the Northeast in snow Saturday, leaving behind a debilitated and disoriented region digging through plump white drifts and reeling against gale-force winds.

Painting a white landscape from Maine to New York, the storm expressed itself much as weather forecasters had predicted. New York City eluded the storm’s worst bite, and muffled-up pedestrians trooped along slushy sidewalks as insouciantly as after any matter-of-fact winter snowfall. But points to the north and east were battered hard.