The full measure of Hurricane Irene's fury came into focus on Monday as the death toll passed 46, while towns in the northern US region of New England battled epic floods and millions were still without electricity.

A car passes a section of Route 112 on Monday that was washed out during Hurricane Irene in Halifax, Vermont. [China Daily via agencies]?

From North Carolina to Maine, communities cleaned up and took stock of the uneven and hard-to-predict costs of a storm that spared the nation's biggest city a nightmare scenario, only to deliver a historic wallop to towns well inland.

In New York City, where people had braced for a disaster-movie scene of water swirling around skyscrapers, the subways and buses were up and running again in time for the Monday morning commute. And to the surprise of many New Yorkers, things went pretty smoothly.

But to the north, landlocked Vermont contended with what its governor called the worst flooding in a century. Streams also raged out of control in rural, upstate New York.

In many cases, the moment of maximum danger arrived well after the storm had passed, as rainwater made its way into rivers and streams and turned them into torrents. Irene dumped up to 28 centimeters of rain on Vermont and more than 33 cm in parts of New York.

"We were expecting heavy rains," said Bobbi-Jean Jeun of Clarksville, a hamlet near Albany, New York. "We were expecting flooding. We weren't expecting devastation. It looks like somebody set a bomb off."

Irene killed at least five people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The first known casualty was a woman who died trying to cross a swollen river in the US territory of Puerto Rico.

The death toll for 11 eastern US states had stood at 21 as of Sunday night, then rose sharply to at least 40 as bodies were pulled from floodwaters and people were struck by falling trees or electrocuted by downed power lines.

A driver was missing after a road collapsed and swallowed two cars about 100 kilometers northeast of Montreal.

The tally of Irene's destruction mounted, too. An apparently vacant home exploded in an evacuated, flooded area in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, early on Monday, and firefighters had to battle the flames from a boat. In the Albany, New York, suburb of Guilderland, police rescued two people on Monday after their car was swept away. Rescuers found them three hours later, clinging to trees along the swollen creek.

"It's going to take time to recover from a storm of this magnitude," US President Barack Obama warned as he promised the government would do everything in its power to help people get back on their feet. Obama signed an emergency declaration for Vermont, making federal assistance available for the entire state.