- .Winter storm has started lumbering up the East Coast and is expected to dump up to 15 inches of snow on New York, 11 inches on Philadelphia, 8 inches on Boston and 9 inches on Portland, Maine into Friday
- .In Washington D.C., the streets were empty and federal government officers were shuttered after 15 inches of snow
- .100 million people set to feet the storm's wrath
- .Traffic snarled in North Carolina on Wednesday due to snowfall and ice in scenes reminiscent of Atlanta during the last storm - but in Atlanta roads were empty as residents heeded warnings this time around
- .Utility workers in the South are scrambling to return power to more than half a million people without power
- .At least 12 people have lost their lives - mostly in car wrecks - in Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and Georgia
More heartbreaking weather began bearing down on the Northeast on the eve of Valentine's Day - dumping more than a foot of snow on cities, grounding thousands of flights and shutting down Washington, D.C.
Already the snowstorm - which pummeled southern states on Wednesday - has canceled more than 5,000 flights nationwide, left more than half a million people without power in the Deep South and killed at least 12.
For the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, the heavy weather was the latest in an unending drumbeat of storms that have depleted cities' salt supplies and caused school systems to run out of snow days. In total, more than 100 million people will feel the storm's wrath.
Baltimore awoke to 15 inches of snow, measured in Pimlico, while nearby in Washington D.C., the city all but shut down after 11 inches accumulated in some areas overnight as more large, fluffy flakes continued to fall throughout Thursday morning.
Federal offices and the city's two main airports were closed, and streets were nearly deserted during the normally frantic commute. The few people braving the chill trudged through the snow on sidewalks, hopping over piles built up at intersections.
Further north, Boston could see eight inches on Thursday, while the snow falling in Philadelphia was expected to reach 11 inches and New Yorkers were experiencing what likely will be 15 inches, CNN reported.
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Here we go again: A lone cross country skier braves the cold and snow to ski near the U.S. Capitol as a major snow storm hits the Washington area Thursday
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Whiteout: Snow arcs in the air as it is removed from the driveway at the White House in Washington on Thursday. A winter storm has already dumped nearly a foot of snow
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Morning walk: Hunter walks his owner in Lafayette Park in front of the White House after the region was pounded with snow overnight
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Cleanup: Heavy, fluffy snow fell across the East Coast on Thursday morning including in Washington DC, where around six inches are forecasted
More snow will also coat New Jersey, which has seen 11 separate snowfalls this season. North Jersey has had a total of 42.5 inches of snow according to gauges at Newark Liberty International Airport, which makes this the sixth snowiest season since official records started in 1931.
Detroit and Toledo in Ohio, are enduring their snowiest month on record, according to the National Weather Service.
Luis Gray, 52, a porter in Washington, D.C., started his workday shoveling about 7am. Gray said he normally takes the bus to work, but it wasn't running, so he got a ride. He said he'd stay home after work and watch TV, then 'hopefully the bus will be running again'.
In Frederick, Maryland, Cory Cheeks worked his pickup through a 4-foot plow pile only to find the road at the end of his hotel parking lot still blocked by snow. The Fredericksburg, Virginia resident was reluctantly preparing for a day of online training, convinced he could have driven 30 miles to Rockville for a face-to-face session if his supervisors hadn't canceled it.
'It's a very powdery snow. It's not very heavy at all,' Cheeks said. 'I could go to work right now, even in my truck. It might not be the smartest idea, but it could be done.'
With flights and driving out of the question for thousands, Amtrak has also suspended some service in the Northeast, South and Mid-Atlantic regions.
In the South, armies of utility workers labored to turn the lights - and the heat - back on for hundreds of thousands of Southerners. Across the nation, more than 90 per cent of the country's 116 million homes will face higher heating bills because of the cold blasts, USA Today reported.
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Onslaught: A bicyclist rides through a snowstorm in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City on Thursday morning as snow returns
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Grueling: Pedestrians use umbrellas as they walk through falling snow in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York on Thursday morning
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Coated: A man walks two snow-covered dogs on Thursday morning through the SoHo neighborhood of New York City
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White out: Roads appeared unplowed in SoHo in New York City on Thursday morning as traffic crawled through the streets
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Trudge: Pedestrians wrap up against the snow as they trudge through SoHo during Thursday's morning commute
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Covered: A sateillite map shows a large swathe of snow clouds over the East Coast of the US early on Thursday morning
There was also havoc on the roads in the Deep South, which remained a world of ice-laden trees and driveways after several unusual days of sleet and snow. Snow was forecast to stop falling and temperatures to rise in most of the state by late morning, but ice remained a concern.
Drivers in and around Raleigh, North Carolina, became snarled Wednesday in huge traffic jams and abandoned cars in scenes reminiscent of motorist woes in Atlanta during a storm two weeks earlier.
For some on slick, snow-covered interstates in the snow-covered state, commutes that should take minutes lasted hours after many got on the highways just as soon as snow and sleet began at midday.
But in Atlanta, many streets were eerily quiet this storm, with drivers heeding dire warnings to stay off the roads - although state troopers say they worked more than 200 crashes in Georgia.
And in South Carolina, more accustomed to occasional hurricanes, some could only relate the damage from ice-snapped tree limbs to that of bygone Hurricane Hugo. Even normally balmy Myrtle Beach, cars were coated in thick ice that also frosted palm trees and kiddie rides by the shore.
'I hate driving on this,' grumbled South Carolina resident Mindy Taylor, 43, on her way for rock salt, kitty litter or anything else to melt the ice. 'Hopefully it'll warm up by the weekend and it will all melt. I'm ready for Spring.'
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Ice storm: An image shows activity in the far corner of the country on Thursday into Friday as the winter storm set to pummel the Northeast
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Threat: A weather map shows the wintry weather heading up the East Coast and reaching into the Northeast throughout Thursday and into Friday, when it will start to rain
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Snow day: Another map shows how much snow areas of the North East can expected into Friday; New York will be hit with 6 inches, Boston could see 8
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Accumulation: Oretha Bailey clears her car of snow in Silver Spring, Maryland on Thursday after as many as 15 inches of snow fell overnight
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Bleak: In Washington, D.C., q man walks along the snow covered Vietnam Memorial. Some parts of the area were hit with 11 inches of snow
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Blustery: A man braces his umbrella while walking through the snow in New York as heavy snow and high winds made for a tough commute
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No end: A commuter walks through heavy snow in Manhattan, which could get up to 15 inches of snow, forecasters predicted
In Alabama, forecasters gleefully spoke of weekend temperatures reaching the 60s after inches of snow or sleet in its northern parts.
Ice combined with wind gusts up to 30 mph snapped tree limbs and power lines. About 350,000 homes and businesses lost electricity in Georgia, South Carolina had about 245,000 outages, and North Carolina around 100,000. Some people could be in the dark for days.
As he did for parts of Georgia, President Barack Obama declared a disaster in South Carolina, opening the way for federal aid. There, a winter storm warning remained in effect, but the wintry mix was forecast to wrap up Thursday morning.
Some Southerners who two weeks ago reveled in the so-called 'snow jam' sounded tired this time of sleet and ice encasing highways, trees and even the tombstones of a cemetery replete with Confederate graves.
Charter school teacher Bethany Lanier, 32, was walking in a mostly empty square in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur with Lindsay Futterman, 30, as they debated whether to get a drink at a pub.
If classes are canceled Friday, the charter school students will have missed nine days of school. To make up days, administrators have canceled a three-day break.
'Now, we're out because we have cabin fever,' Lanier said as Futterman added: 'It's kind of annoying now.'
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Still going: A CSX freight train blasts through high snow at a crossing in Silver Spring, Maryland on Thursday - although Amtrak stopped many services
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Downed: Workers remove trees and snapped power lines brought down during the winter storm on Wednesday in Doraville, Georgia
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Challenge: Jonathan Krobath struggles to push a row of shopping carts through the snow on Wednesday in Hope Mills, North Carolina
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Snow day! Siblings Joy Medvar, eight, and seven-year-old Albert Medvar , play in the snow in Spartanburg, South Carolina on Wednesday
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Pummeled: A map shows the effects of major winter storm driving from the Gulf of Mexico toward the East Coast, showing power outages
Many Southerners took to makeshift sleds on the ice and snow, with at least seven people hospitalized in sledding accidents just in Georgia.
Four people were hurt sledding in a kayak that crashed into a pole, said Fire Chief Ricky Pruit in Cleveland, Georgia. One victim suffered leg injuries, another was knocked unconscious and lost several teeth, and the other two refused treatment, he said.
Three people were killed when an ambulance careened off an icy West Texas road and caught fire. On Tuesday, four people died in weather-related traffic accidents in North Texas, including a Dallas firefighter who was knocked from an I-20 ramp and fell 50 feet. In Mississippi, two traffic deaths were reported as well as in North Carolina. Also, a Georgia man apparently died of hypothermia after spending hours outside during the storm, a coroner said.
In Atlanta, which was caught badly unprepared by the last storm, area schools announced even before the first drop of sleet fell that they would be closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. Schools were also closed for Thursday. Many businesses in the corporate capital of the South shut down, too.
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Stuck! Friends helped push a car up a hill in a snowed-in neighborhood in Durham, North Carolina, on Wednesday
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The winter weather resulted in countless minor crashes like this one in Greensboro, North Carolina. Some crashes ended up claiming lives
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Stuck: Traffic slowed to a crawl on a major thoroughfare in Charlotte, which was walloped by Winter Storm Pax on Wednesday. Charlotte police officers closely watched the flow of cars
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Panic buying: A Publix grocery store's depleted shelves are seen Tuesday ahead of the catastrophic winter storm about to hit metro Atlanta and the South on Wednesday and Thursday
The scene was markedly different from the one Jan. 28, when thousands of children were stranded all night in schools by less than 3 inches of snow and countless drivers abandoned their cars after getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours and hours.
'I think some folks would even say they were a little trigger-happy to go ahead and cancel schools (Tuesday), as well as do all the preparation they did,' said Matt Altmix, who was out walking his dog in Atlanta on Wednesday. 'But it's justified.'
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory urged people to charge their cellphones and find batteries for radios and flashlights because the storm could bring nearly a foot of snow in places such as Charlotte.
'Stay smart. Don't put your stupid hat on at this point in time. Protect yourself. Protect your family. Protect your neighbors,' McCrory said.
In a warning issued early Wednesday, the National Weather Service called the storm across the South 'catastrophic ... crippling ... paralyzing ... choose your adjective.'
Eli Jacks, a meteorologist with National Weather Service, said forecasters use words like 'catastrophic' sparingly.
'Sometimes we want to tell them, "Hey, listen, this warning is different. This is really extremely dangerous and it doesn't happen very often",' Jacks said.
This kind of language was first used in May 1999 for a tornado in Moore, Oklahoma. Forecasters called it a 'tornado emergency' to make sure the public knew it was not a typical tornado.
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Damage: Millions of people are in the path of the storm that proved too much even for some police officers, pictured. Rescue crews has to pull a Hamilton County, Tennessee, sheriff's officer who slid off the road and became trapped inside his vehicle on Wednesday
A Georgia Department of Transportation sign warns drivers of winter weather as they travel a bleak section of Highway 141 on Wednesday in Norcross, Georgia
'I think three-quarters of an inch of ice anywhere would be catastrophic,' Jacks said.
But the Atlanta area and other parts of the South are particularly vulnerable because there are so many trees and limbs hanging over power lines. When the ice builds up on them, limbs snap and fall, knocking out power.
'There is no doubt that this is one of Mother Nature's worst kinds of storms that can be inflicted on the South, and that is ice. It is our biggest enemy,' Georgia Governor Nathan Deal said.
The winter storm could bring a thick layer of ice and cause widespread power outages for days - potentially to millions of people.
Delta, which operates its busiest hub in Atlanta, canceled more than 1,400 flights nationwide across Tuesday and Wednesday. U.S. Airways, which operates a major hub out of Charlotte, canceled more than 330 flights on Tuesday and another 540 on Wednesday.
But, if the storm comes anywhere near to predictions, it is expected that up to 10,000 fights will be canceled through till Friday when the storm is expected to disperse.
So bad are the backlogs in hotels across Atlanta and the South that Delta is allowing its staff to sleep in their planes because they cannot find them rooms to stay in.
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