Snow Piles Up in Mid-Atlantic States
Last Updated 12:41 p.m. ET
A blizzard battered the U.S. capital and Mid-Atlantic states Saturday, with emergency crews struggling to keep pace with the heavy, wet snow that piled up on roadways, toppled trees and left thousands without electricity.
Authorities blamed the storm for hundreds of accidents, including a deadly tractor-trailer wreck that killed a father and son who had stopped to help someone in Virginia. Some area hospitals asked people with four-wheel-drive vehicles to volunteer to pick up doctors and nurses to take them to work.
Most people seemed to be hunkered down at home early Saturday, out of the way of road crews. In downtown Washington, a few people ventured out to walk their dogs and clear away thigh-high snow from sidewalks. Plows and a few intrepid drivers cruised the snow-covered roads - a departure from the usual weekend traffic congestion.
A state of emergency was declared from Virginia to New Jersey, reports CBS News correspondent Whit Johnson. Blizzard warnings were issued for the District of Columbia, Baltimore, parts of New Jersey and Delaware and some areas west of the Chesapeake Bay.
Teams of workers armed with snow blowers and shovels tried to clear a path in front of office buildings and businesses. Washington officials hoped to keep roads clear and have the city back to its bustling pace by Monday.
"If the storm tracks as they're saying, we should be good and open for business Monday morning. That's our goal," said Karyn LeBlanc, a spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Transportation.
Forecasters said the storm could be the biggest for the U.S. capital in modern history.
A record 2½ feet or more was predicted for Washington. As of early Saturday, 10 inches of snow was reported at the White House, while parts of Maryland and West Virginia were buried under more than 20 inches. Forecasters expected snowfall rates to increase, up to 2 inches per hour through Saturday morning.
CBS Station WUSA reported snowfall as of this morning totaling 39 inches in the appropriately named Frostburg, Md., and 43 inches in nearby Flintstone, close to the Pennsylvania border.
Transportation Snarls
Metro, the transit system the Washington area is heavily dependent upon, closed all but the underground rail service and suspended bus service. Maryland's public transportation also shut down Saturday, including Baltimore's Metro.
Some planes managed to take off from D.C.-area airports but many flights were canceled, forcing passengers to try their luck with the train.
"My flight was for this afternoon," one traveler told CBS News, "and then I changed it yesterday on the assumption it would be canceled, and it was this morning."
"Things are fairly manageable, but trees are starting to come down," said D.C. fire department spokesman Pete Piringer, whose agency responded to some of the falling trees. No injuries were reported.
At Dulles International Airport, part of a hangar roof collapsed and damaged some of the private jets housed inside, though no one was hurt, said Courtney Mickalonis, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
More than 250 flights for Friday and Saturday were canceled at Philadelphia International Airport. Six to twelve inches is expected in the Philadelphia area, with eight to fourteen inches predicted to fall in Pittsburgh.
The storm has shut down Atlantic City Airport, but the situation was quite different at Newark Liberty International Airport in northern New Jersey, which saw much less snow from the nor'easter.
While some flights were canceled or delayed, most arriving and departing flights there were on schedule Saturday. Normal operations also were reported at New York's LaGuardia and JFK airports.
Amtrak also canceled some of its Northeast Corridor trains Saturday, though the company says some trains are still running on the key route.
Traffic was light on most major roadways Saturday, as residents heeded warnings to stay home during the storm.
"So far our call volume is below average, so it seems motorists have taken our advice to stay off the roadways," Tracy Noble, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, said late Saturday morning.
About 75 percent of those calls involved vehicles stuck in snow or drivers needing a tow truck, she said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said portions of major roadways were closed after several accidents.
New Jersey Transit is suspending most of its southern New Jersey routes as snow keeps piling up in the region.
The transit agency says its buses in the area will be off the road by 10:30 a.m. Saturday. And it wasn't clear when the buses would resume their routes.
Across the region, transportation officials deployed thousands of trucks and crews and had hundreds of thousands of tons of salt at the ready.
The blizzard did not keep President Barack Obama from traveling a few blocks through deserted streets in a motorcade of sport utility vehicles from the White House to a nearby hotel to speak at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Obama thanked the activists for being willing to brave the blizzard which he referred to as "Snowmageddon."
Power Out
Hundreds of thousands of customers across the region had lost electricity and more outages were expected to be reported because of all the downed power lines. A hospital fire in D.C. sent about three dozen patients scurrying from their rooms to safety in a basement. The blaze started when a snow plow truck caught fire near the building.
The snow comes less than two months after a Dec. 19 storm dumped more than 16 inches on Washington. Snowfalls of this magnitude - let alone two in one season - are rare in the area. According to the National Weather Service, Washington has gotten more than a foot of snow only 13 times since 1870.
The heaviest on record was 28 inches in January 1922. The biggest snowfall for the Washington-Baltimore area is believed to have been in 1772, before official records were kept, when as much as 3 feet fell, which George Washington and Thomas Jefferson penned in their diaries.