Thursday, December 24, 2009

GROTE WINTERSTORM TREFT VS... ( bbc)

Eastern US emerges from monster snowstorm

Washington got an entire season's worth of snow on Saturday
The US north-east is slowly emerging from a huge winter storm which dumped up to 2ft (60cm) of snow in the Washington area over the weekend.

One of the worst blizzards in decades had sprawled 500 miles (800km) over a dozen states, causing six deaths and widespread disruption to services.

Government offices in Washington were due to operate on Monday, and all rail stations were working, officials said.

But in Philadelphia, schools were shut as streets were still buried in snow.

Power outages are still affecting nearly 200,000 people in North Carolina, West Virginia and Virginia. More than 500 people remain in shelters.

The storm proved milder for New York, which saw 1ft (30cm) of snow.

All three major airports in the city are working their way back to normal after the cancellation of 1,200 flights over the weekend.

Record snow

Washington DC earlier saw the largest snowfall ever recorded in a single December day and southern New Jersey its highest single-storm snow in almost four years.





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Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky and Delaware, along with Washington and Philadelphia, at some stage all declared emergencies.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty expressed confidence that most city streets would be cleared by Monday.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg remained upbeat, saying the snow fell too late on Saturday to affect Christmas trading severely.

"Hopefully, we'll have a little bit of a white Christmas," he said.

Some tourists were happy. Briton Kevin Sanders said: "We just came off the Statue of Liberty when [the snow] came down last night, and look this morning. It's amazing. It gives it the Christmas feel as well."

Others suffered more difficulties - about 150 people were stranded for five hours on a Long Island train.

Airports in Washington, Baltimore and Boston also experienced severe problems.