Snow piles up, paralysing US capital

7 Feb 2010, 5:01 pm   -   Source: AAP
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A blizzard battered the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States on Saturday, quickly dumping large amounts of snow that piled up on roadways and toppled trees.

Residents of the US East Coast began digging up from under a thick blanket of snow on Sunday after a record-breaking blizzard paralysed Washington and the region, snapping power to 350,000 residents and killing two people.

The monster storm stretched more than 1,000 kilometres from eastern Indiana across into New Jersey and then down as far south as North Carolina, affecting tens of millions of Americans.

With winds gusting at almost 90 kilometres an hour, meteorologists said they had recorded snowfall as high as 96 centimetres near Baltimore, Maryland - a record.

The heavy, sticky snow toppled trees and snapped power lines, leaving more than 350,000 people without electricity in Maryland and neighbouring Virginia.

"Snowmageddon here in DC," President Barack Obama told Democrats in a speech, only a year after chiding the capital for over responding to small snowfalls.

The National Weather Service put the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area under a rare 24-hour blizzard warning until 10pm Saturday (1400 AEDT Sunday).

Forecasters warned residents to hunker down, with no let-up in the weather for most of the day, and said chilly temperatures on Sunday would mean the wet snow would swiftly turn icy.

"Officially this won't break records in DC, but unofficially, you bet it will," Paul Kochin, an expert in northeast weather systems, told AFP.

"It's very rare to have two such big storms in one season," he said, after the capital region was already crippled by a smaller but still massive storm in December.

Maryland and Virginia, were bearing the brunt of the storm and seeing the highest snowfalls, he said.

"It's pretty rough out there," agreed Ed McDonough from the Maryland Emergency Management Agency.

In terms of the Baltimore-Washington corridor, "this is probably the biggest storm we've ever had," he said.

Emergency teams struggling to repair the power cuts were hampered by the miserable weather.

"We have a lot of scattered outages and the road conditions are not really working with us," admitted Pepco spokesman Andre Francis, pleading for patience as some customers were told the blackouts could last days.

Some 200 National Guardsmen had been deployed across Maryland, while in Virginia police confirmed that a father and son were killed on Friday when they stopped to help a stranded car.

Police in the state had responded to some 3,167 calls for help, more than two-thirds of which were due to car accidents or stranded vehicles.

Three state troopers were also injured in storm-related accidents in Virginia.

All flights out of the capital's Reagan National airport were cancelled, along with most flights out of Dulles International Airport in Virginia, while there was limited service at Baltimore.

States to the north like Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware are more used to heavy snowfalls and got their share of the great blizzard of 2010.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was buried by 68cm, reportedly the city's second deepest all-time snowfall, while Wilmington, Delaware counted 67cm, according to the NWS.

And nearly 70cm was reported at American University in Washington, DC.

The storm generated equal parts frustration and fascination.

In the normally bustling capital, sight-seers walked thigh-deep in the snow along the famous national mall, or went cross-country skiing down eerily empty boulevards.

Snow ploughs were out trying to keep emergency routes and main highways clear, but most officials said it would take days to reach the smaller streets, and warned of a difficult Monday morning commute.

The capital's transportation system has shut down 40 above ground subway stations and halted bus service, meaning transport links between Washington and its heavily-populated suburbs were snapped, with most major roads impassable.

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