February 18, 2003	Tuesday	Zul Hijjah 16, 1423

WASHINGTON, Feb 17: The powerful weekend winter storm that buried the Washington, D.C. area also killed at least 12 people across eastern United States and forced authorities to declare a state of emergency from New York to Kentucky.

Airports and roads were also closed.

By Monday morning, it was moving into the Northeast where blustery winds and up to a foot of snow was expected in parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Millions of people across the East Coast spent their long, three-day weekend with shovels in hands as the region was covered under more than two feet of snow.

At least a dozen deaths have been blamed on the weather since snow and rain moved across the Plains on Friday. The storm moved east at a lethargic pace over the last two days, lashing the Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic before heading into the Northeast.

The storm was part of a massive system that caused blizzard conditions in the Northeast; rain, mudslides and floods in the South; heavy snowfall across the eastern United States.

A winter storm warning issued on Sunday night promised to make President’s Day, the third and final day of the long weekend, one of closed businesses and hopelessly snarled transportation from Virginia to New England. By early Monday, some places in Greater Washington area had received up to 30 inches of snow. Baltimore airport had received 23 inches, the worst since 1922.

Flakes piled up at a rate of up to 4 inches an hour in parts of Maryland, where Governor Robert Ehrlich banned most civilian traffic from state highways. He was one of several governors to declare disaster areas.

Because of the storm, President Bush returned to the White House by motorcade instead of travelling by helicopter from his mountaintop retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

“This storm will produce six or more inches of snow across all of southern New England,” the National Weather Service reported. “In addition, northeast winds will combine with heavy snow to produce near blizzard conditions on Monday afternoon across portions of eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, including the cities of Boston and Providence.”

States of emergency were declared in Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and West Virginia.

Snow was falling in the metro New York area Monday as well as around the US capital, where a relentless snow became mixed with sleet by Sunday night and additional seven to eight inches was reported on Monday morning.

The storm drew comparisons with the blizzard that hit Washington in 1996 and also to 1922’s “Knickerbocker Storm,” so named because the two feet of wet, heavy snow caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre to collapse, killing some 100 people inside. The weather service said a low-pressure system in North Carolina and Virginia was marching to the north, which would cause skies to clear and temperatures to climb into the 40s by midweek.

Snow removal in Washington was expected to be easier on Monday due to the federal holiday that will keep nearly all government offices and schools closed and thousands of vehicles off the streets.

While the Mid-Atlantic regions shifted into a clean-up mode, New Jersey and New York were getting ready to face snow accumulations expected to be at least a foot with strong winds that will create blizzard conditions from Philadelphia into New England.

Airlines on Sunday announced they did not expect flight operations to normalize until sometime on Monday afternoon at airports in the New York area. Philadelphia International Airport was closed on Sunday, as were Reagan National in Washington and Baltimore-Washington International, outside Baltimore.