A winter storm piled historic amounts of snow onto parts of the U.S. Northeast on Thursday and wreaked havoc throughout the region, hobbling if not paralyzing travel as it moved up the coast and bore down on New England.The first major snowstorm of the season, which was expected to move out to sea by the end of Thursday, prompted officials to urge the region's 50 million residents to stay home, a warning many had been routinely issuing anyway because of the pandemic.