New York:
It came up the coast on the last weekend of autumn, a ghostly apparition of midwinter, roaring into the solitude of cities and countrysides from the Carolinas to Cape Cod with blizzard like ferocity. It closed airports, roads and malls and recreated Whittier's snowbound American landscape for 60 million people.
By the time the two-day blow churned to oblivion in the Atlantic on Sunday, a dozen states had been buried. It was not the storm of the century, but 2 feet of snow lay across eastern Long Island and parts of Virginia, West Virginia and New Jersey, and nearly that much in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island.
Records fell in Washington (16.4 inches), Baltimore (20.5 inches) and Upton, N.Y., the Suffolk County site of a National Weather Service center (26.3 inches). The heaviest snowfall was in Wintergreen, Va., which had 30 inches. One death was reported, a 68-year-old woman in a Virginia traffic accident.
But there were odd tales of two trains gone awry. In what Helena Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road, called "the train ride from hell," about 50 riders were stranded, shuttled and towed aboard four trains in a seven-hour ordeal that began at Pennsylvania Station at 1:17 a.m. and ended at Ronkonkoma at 8:45 a.m. In between there were snowdrifts, ice, an engine breakdown and no heat on a three-hour stretch going backward from Wyandanch to Farmingdale.
And in New Jersey, passengers aboard a train and a bus, both operated by NJ Transit, had a close call at Pennsauken on Saturday night. Officials said a bus with 26 passengers stalled on snow-covered railroad tracks as the train with 38 passengers approached. The bus riders were evacuated moments before the vehicle was struck by the train.
"There was a terrific impact noise," said Ralph Mintel, a passenger on the train, "and the rail car rocked violently from side to side. I feared that we had derailed, and that the car was going to tip over." He was relieved to learn that no one was killed and only two people aboard the train were injured.
On Sunday, airports reopened and flights resumed, although thousands of travelers remained stranded in a backup of schedules that was expected to last for days. Plows cleared most of the major highways and many streets, children and adults frolicked in enchanted parks and life struggled toward normalcy as residents began to dig out of what, for many, was the biggest snowstorm in years.
As the sun came out, residents emerged with shovels, sleds and cameras. States of emergency were lifted in many cities and states, malls and businesses reopened and most buses and railroads resumed near normal schedules, although Long Island Rail Road service was limited, with hourly trains on most branches.
New York City was spared the brunt of the storm, recording 10.9 inches in Central Park, 14.2 at John F. Kennedy International Airport and 8.8 at La Guardia Airport. There were many flight cancellations, but an upbeat Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg encouraged residents and visitors to turn inconvenience into an opportunity to see a Broadway show, go to a museum or do some Christmas shopping.
The mayor said that thousands of sanitation workers plowing around the clock had cleared all of the city's major arteries, and he predicted that all the streets would be plowed overnight. But with many cars still buried in curbside drifts, alternate-side parking rules were suspended for Monday. Bloomberg also said schools would be open Monday.
As the storm roared up the coast, it slammed hard into eastern Long Island, dropping at least 2 feet of snow in several communities, including Bridgehampton, East Setauket and Patchogue. Whiteout conditions prompted declarations of emergency in Riverhead, Southampton and other communities, and motorists were directed to stay off the roads.
Many Long Islanders reached back decades for the last comparable snowfall. "The only ones I can relate to this were the storms of '77 and '78," said Bob Wesolowski, the owner of RBR/Melville Snow Contractors.
"We just got hammered," said John Searing, deputy commissioner of the Suffolk County Fire, Rescue and Emergency Services. He said he passed 15 abandoned vehicles on his way to work, while dozens more slowed clearing efforts on the Long Island Expressway and other highways.
Drifts up to 7 feet on the runways forced the closing of MacArthur Airport in Islip, for the first time since it was built in 1949, during the height of the storm, from 9 p.m. Saturday to 11 a.m. Sunday. Even after it reopened, most flights were canceled.
Suffolk County police reported that a private snowplow driver was found driver in Coram, N.Y.; it was unclear if his death was storm-related. The plow was in park and running when he was found at 8 a.m., and officials said they could not rule out an accident or exposure.
Motorists across the region were urged to stay off treacherous roads. Scores of accidents were reported, but no deaths or serious injuries. There were isolated power failures in New Jersey, but nearly all were expected to be resolved overnight. Gov. Jon S. Corzine praised the work of cleanup crews and utility workers, and said there had been no storm-related fatalities in the state.
The storm, which walloped the mid-Atlantic states and the nation's capital on Saturday and moved across the Northeast on Sunday, shut down many airports in the region. While the New York area airports - Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark Liberty International - remained open, it was just a technicality; blizzardlike conditions forced airlines to cancel 750 flights.
Stranded passengers clogged the Delta Terminal at La Guardia on Sunday, and among them were six friends from Lafayette, La., whose first-time vacation in New York was ending sourly.
They had arrived last Wednesday and were due to fly home at 8:30 p.m. But their flight was canceled and Delta told them there were no seats available until the afternoon of Dec. 25. "We can't go home until Christmas night," said Lindsay Kirkpatrick, 24, a teacher's aide. "We don't have anywhere to stay tonight. We have no food vouchers, nothing."
It was not all misery. Outside the Brooklyn Public Library, on their way to Prospect Park with a sled, Angie Lee and her husband, Alex Lencicki, each held a hand of their son Dashiell, 2, and lofted him over a pile of slush. Bundled in a brown snowsuit with blue mittens, he squealed. "He's happy even if we don't make it to the park," Lee said. "It's like playing with the wrapping instead of the present."
Nearby, Abe Lusk, 12, crammed handfuls of snow into his mouth. "Snow hasn't tasted this good in a long time," he observed.
Around New York, city parks were dreamscapes of snow meadows and dark woodlands in silhouette. It was the last day of autumn, and thousands of children and adults muffled to the eyes were out enjoying the pre-winter spectacle, gliding down hills on sleds, snowboards and skis. Parks Department personnel handed out plastic sleds and poured free cups of hot cocoa in all the boroughs.
"Nature has smiled upon us," said Deborah Krohn, 48, of the Upper West Side of Manhattan. "It has been the perfect storm."