East Coast Digging Out from Weekend Storm

A massive snowstorm over the long Presidents' Day weekend left most of the Mid-Atlantic and New England region buried on several feet of snow, news services said.

The storm piled snow up the coast from Virginia to Massachusetts and the storm covered the Ohio River Valley with ice, officials told the Associated Press.

In the Washington area, airports closed, highway traffic was brought to a halt and prompted officials to declare states of emergency in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Government offices and businesses were also shuttered by the storm, which in addition to crippling transportation networks has been blamed for 28 deaths since it swept out of the Great Plains region. More than 250,000 homes and businesses were without power Tuesday morning, AP said.

Washington received more than 24 inches of snow, while New York clocked in with 19 inches and Boston reported nearly 28 inches of snow – its largest accumulation since 1892, when records began being kept.

Officials in the affected areas said that it would likely be several days until transportation networks got back to normal, news services said.

The storm was being called the region’s worst since the blizzard of 1996. That storm killed at least 80 people AP said, and cost governments millions to clean up.