Icy roads, spotty transit service follow East Coast blizzard

The nation’s capital was at a standstill, with federal government offices ordered shut on Monday, schools in the district and surrounding suburbs shuttered and the U.S. House of Representatives cancelling all votes until next week. That brought the death toll in New York City to five, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio.

A Washington traffic ban remained in effect, with people skiing and snowboarding on slopes around the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday.

NY and Baltimore began lifting travel restrictions and hearty souls ventured out on snow-choked streets, while mass transit systems up and down the coast prepared to restore normal service.

“We still have some areas that we have to do a lot more work on”. The first indications that a potential major nor’easter was going to develop came about a full week ahead of this weekend’s blizzard.

The storm was blamed for at least 33 deaths as it slammed a dozen states from Friday into early Sunday, many of them people who suffered heart attacks while shoveling, or killed on icy roads, though several died of carbon monoxide poisoning trying to keep warm in cars or homes.

One person died in Maryland and three in NY while shovelling snow.

Officials say 13 people died in auto crashes in Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky on Saturday.

Reinsurer Munich Re said it was too early to estimate losses from the storm. A state of emergency declared by Cuomo was still in place. The city’s bus service will also operate on a limited basis. Broadway shows have resumed. Schools were open in New York City.

Long Island Rail Road service, which had been suspended due to the storm, was partially restored for Monday morning, though it was still halted in some areas.

The few people out and about trudged through slush and ice and picked their way through sometimes chest-high drifts of snow piled up by plow trucks.

Outside the city, suburban New Jersey resembled Vermont.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience”, said Paul Mikula, who hauled his snowboard up to Times Square in NY and shredded the snow under the neon lights.

“I used to like it”, Barbara Enman of Brooklyn said of snow as she shoveled her front steps.

This story has been corrected to delete references to single-day record for Washington, where the accumulation of 22.4 inches at the zoo was total, not single-day. The deepest regional total was 42 inches (106.7 cm) at Glengarry, West Virginia.

In midtown Manhattan, cars were digged out of snows and several closed roads were reopened on Sunday when the blizzard abated and sunlight shone through again, prompting the city to spring back to life with several persons taking up their ski equipment and drifting about New York City.

Forecasters said the storm dubbed “Snowzilla” dumped 56 centimeters in Washington.

Road accidents Friday night caused a seven-mile backup involving around 500 vehicles on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, a Pennsylvania State Police spokeswoman said.

Public schools were closed on Monday across much of the Washington and Baltimore region, with some shuttered through Tuesday.

Even with federal government offices officially closed, the Supreme Court was open for business, scheduled to issue rulings and act on pending appeals from the snowbound courthouse across from the US Capitol building.

Pedestrians file through a passage between mounds of snow in northwest Washington, DC on January 25, 2016.

Nevertheless, walkers, sledders, some cars and the occasional cross-country skier ventured into the dazzling white under a bright sun.

“I have to get into work no matter what”.

“I was not prepared for this”, said Josh Kief, who owns a towing business and a home contracting firm in Glengary.

“I heard commotion out my window, and I looked and I saw the raging water”, he said.

At Dupont Circle, hundreds gathered to pelt each other with snowballs.

In North Wildwood, the high tide was much higher than anticipated and caught numerous town’s 5,000 year-round residents off guard – with flooding levels that exceeded those during Sandy, said Patrick Rosenello, the city’s mayor.

“They all turned on me, as teenagers will do”, she told Reuters Television.

Almost 150,000 power outages were reported in North Carolina alone at the height of the storm, emergency officials said.

On Sunday, moderate coastal flooding was still a concern in the Jersey Shore’s Atlantic County, said Linda Gilmore, a county public information officer.