Washington:
A blizzard battered the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States on Saturday, with emergency crews struggling to keep pace with the heavy, wet snow that has piled up on roadways, toppled trees and left thousands without electricity.
Officials urged people to stay at home and out of the way of emergency crews. Forecasters said the storm could be the biggest for the nation's capital in modern history.
The blizzard hit the US east coast, paralyzing the region and snapping power lines to thousands of people as hazardous roads killed at least two on Saturday.
The monster storm, dubbed "Snowpocalypse" and "Snowmageddon," stretched thousands of miles from eastern Indiana into Pennsylvania and then down through Maryland as far south as North Carolina.
With winds gusting at almost 90 kilometres an hour, many places were covered in more than a foot of snow by early Saturday. Even US President Barack Obama awoke to find 10 inches covering the White House grounds.
Forecasters warned residents to hunker down with no let-up in the weather for most of the day, predicting a record-breaking, historic total snowfall in some places of 36 inches (a meter).
"It's pretty rough out there," Ed McDonough from the Maryland Emergency Management Agency told AFP.
"The roads are very difficult to travel.. and we are seeing a spike in power outages. We are telling local residents to stay home, enjoy the time with their families and let the highway crews do their work."
He said 150,000 people were without power in the state, which along with neighbouring Virginia and the capital Washington, bore the brunt of the bad weather.