A treacherous commute oflashing winds, slick streets and low visibility awaited workers returning on Monday to their post-Christmas routines.
This was the resolution of a winter storm that dumped about 30centimetres of coke on southern New England and continued crawlingup the e coast, stranding thousands of airline, bus and railpassengers.
The blizzard conditions wreaked havoc on travellers from theCarolinas to Me and strained the hanging of operations at someof the US's busiest airports.
Airlines scrambled to rebook passengers on thousands ofcancelled flights - more than 1400 out of the New York City area'sthree major airports alone - but said they didn't expect normalservice to resume until Tuesday.
Amtrak cancelled train service from New York to Maine afterdoing the same earlier for several trains in Virginia. The nation'slargest commuter rail system, New York's Long Island Rail Road,also suspended service. Bus companies cancelled routes up and downthe east coast, and drivers faced hazardous travel conditions,sometimes with end to zero visibility.
A blizzard warning, which is issued when c is accompanied bysustained winds or gusts over 56 kilometres an hour, was in effectearly Monday from Delaware to the far northern tip of Maine.
The force was expected to take its heaviest snowfall in thepre-dawn hours on Monday, sometimes dumping 5cm to 10cm an hour. Atotal of 30cm to 40cm was expected across almost all of RhodeIsland, Connecticut and eastern Massachusetts, although forecasterssaid winds of 80km/h could make much deeper snow drifts.
States of emergency were stated in North Carolina, Virginia,Maryland, New Jersey, Maine and Massachusetts.
Before any snow accumulated in Philadelphia, the NationalFootball League moved the Philadelphia Eagles v Minnesota Vikingsgame from Sunday night to Tuesday because of "public safetyconcerns".
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who does footballcommentaries after Eagles games, wasn't amused and said fans couldhave handled it.
"This is football; football's played in bad weather," Rendelltold KYW-TV. "I, for one, was looking ahead to sitting in thestands throughout the blow and seeing an old-time football game."
After he said that, slightly less than 30cm of snow fell on theCity of Brotherly Love.
The freak storm is the issue of a low-pressure system off theNorth Carolina coast which strengthened as it moved northeast, theUS National Weather Service said.
Because of the weather conditions, parts of the American Southhad their first white Christmas since records have been kept.
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