Storm, Ice Knock Out Power in the East : Weather: Nearly 400,000 lose electricity from West Virginia to New England. Boston area gets 16 inches of snow.

Nearly 400,000 people were left without power Saturday as another wave of snow, ice and freezing rain battered the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.

Temperatures dipped well below freezing overnight before warming up just enough to leave much of the region coated in a patina of half-frozen ice that made driving, and even walking, dangerous.

As the region’s third storm in two weeks moved out to sea, ice weighed down and snapped many power lines.

Utility repair crews were busy from West Virginia into New England. “Our crews have been out all night,” said Donna Nowcid, spokeswoman for Jersey Central Power & Light in New Jersey.

The heavy layers of ice knocked out power to about 200,000 people in the Philadelphia area, 74,000 customers in New Jersey, 10,000 customers in Rhode Island, 87,000 customers on New York’s Long Island and more than 25,800 customers in West Virginia.

The U.S. Weather Service predicted more blowing and drifting snow late Saturday in southern New England, while another six inches of snow was expected to fall atop half a foot of snow already on the ground in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Snow levels reached 15 inches at Hartford, Conn., eight inches at Providence, R.I., and a little less over Cape Cod, where snow had earlier turned to rain as the winter storm system moved off to the northeast.

The Boston area was buried under almost 16 inches of snow, and Logan International Airport was shut down for more than seven hours Saturday when the sole operating runway was declared unsafe. The airport reopened in the late afternoon.

Crews at New Jersey’s Newark International Airport kept only one of two main runways open at a time in order to clear the other, said operations agent Tom Suarez.

The weather also affected train travel.

Signal and switch problems south of Philadelphia caused one- to two-hour delays on four of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains between Washington and Boston, said spokesman Cliff Black.

Metro North Commuter Railroad, which connects New York City to its northern suburbs, experienced delays of as much as an hour because of switches that froze overnight.

Authorities asked motorists to stay off the roads, and officials in several states banned propane shipments and extra-long trucks from the region’s biggest highway.

A Massachusetts State Police spokesman said that the interstate highways were largely deserted.

Residents of New York City awoke Saturday to a coating of ice on trees, buildings and walkways, as freezing rain teamed up with earlier snow to make travel treacherous. Few people braved the city streets.

Only the region’s ski resort operators have found much to cheer about. Ski areas in New England reported the best conditions in five years, with a foot or more of fresh powder falling on bases of 24-50 inches, allowing most resorts to open nearly all of their trails.