A nor’easter blustered into New York and Jersey on Wednesday, threatening to swamp homes all over again, plunge neighborhoods back into darkness, and inflict more misery on tens of thousands of people still reeling from Superstorm Sandy.

Under ordinary circumstances, a storm of this sort wouldn’t be a big deal, but large swaths of the landscape were still an open wound, with many of Sandy’s victims still mucking out their homes and cars.

Thousands of people in low-lying neighborhoods staggered by the superstorm just over a week ago were warned to clear out, with authorities saying rain, wet snow and 60 mph gusts in the evening could set back the cleanup, topple trees wrenched loose by Sandy, and erase some of the hard-won progress made in restoring electricity to millions of customers.

“I am waiting for the locusts and pestilence next,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said. “We may take a setback in the next 24 hours.”