A powerful coastal storm lashed the state with strong winds and with as much as 6 inches of rain Wednesday night and into Thursday, bringing down trees and power lines, snarling traffic, and stranding motorists on flooded roads.
About 78,000 customers lost power during the nor’easter, National Grid and NStar officials said. By Thursday evening, National Grid, which had a peak of 35,000 customers without power during the storm, had 3,400 remaining in the dark, while NStar, which had peaked at 43,000, had 370 still without power.
The National Weather Service fielded scores of reports of trees falling and roads flooding.
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“We’ve had some trees into houses,” meteorologist Alan Dunham said.
Despite the flooding and numerous fallen trees and power outages, most of the hardest-hit cities and towns reported no serious injuries.
Temperatures were mostly in the 50s, falling into the 40s in some areas. But if it had been colder, the outcome could have been worse.
“We would have been measuring snow in terms of feet, not inches,” Dunham said. “We’re glad it wasn’t snow.”
More than 6 inches of rain were measured at Beverly Airport, and more than 5 at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton.
Brockton got more than 5 inches as well, and dozens other towns received 2 or more inches. Boston got 2.85.
“We responded to about a half a dozen” people stuck in cars, Deputy Fire Chief William Petrosino of Beverly said, adding that several streets were overwhelmed by up to 3 feet of water.
Lynn received two similar calls from drivers who needed to be rescued from water of about the same depth, Fire Chief James E. McDonald said.
On the South Shore, the flooding was familiar.
“It wasn’t too bad,” Fire Captain William Sestito of Scituate said. “They’re used to it, you know?”
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Still, damage was done. Several people had to be rescued from a home on Oceanside Drive shortly after midnight Thursday, Sestito said, and police officers had to abandon one cruiser after driving it into deep water.
Quincy saw little flooding but was wind-whipped on Thursday. Deputy Fire Chief Paul Griffith said seven boats, including an approximately 30-foot sailboat, were blown onto Quincy beaches.
Other coastal cities, such as Newburyport, saw minor tidal flooding and beach erosion during high tide, said Newburyport’s police chief, Thomas Howard.
“The storm’s been pretty aggressive, but [Plum Island] itself has done well with the storm,” Howard said. “We’re just going to monitor [the tide] to make sure we don’t have some type of additional erosion. . . . We always keep a close eye on it, because sometimes the backlash is worse than the storm itself.”
Several times Wednesday night and Thursday morning, trees fell on rail tracks. One train on the Newburyport/Rockport line was halted while a tree was removed, Keolis Commuter Services spokesman Mac Daniel said.
“It wasn’t an ideal morning,” Daniel said.“Trains were running pretty much per schedule, but they were operating, on average, 20 to 30 minutes late.”
Forecasters issued flood warnings Thursday for much of Eastern and Central Massachusetts, and a wind advisory, predicting gusts up to 45 miles per hour,was in effect throughout the evening.
The days ahead will bring welcome change, however, with mostly drier conditions.
Friday, while overcast, will “definitely [be] an improvement” over Thursday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Hayden Frank.
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A few scattered showers may roll in, but they will not dump nearly as much rain over the region as the nor’easter did, he said.
Winds will be milder, and temperatures will be in the 50s.
A sunny Saturday is ahead, with temperatures in the low 60s, Frank said.
Sunday, temperatures will dip into the upper 50s, and a few pop-up showers are possible, but they should be brief.
Next week launches with sunny skies and temperatures in the high 60s.
Laura Crimaldi of the Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent Rachel Riley contributed to this report. Kiera Blessing can be reached at kiera.blessings@globe.com.