D.C., New York at a standstill

NEW YORK - A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the East Coast to a standstill Saturday, dumping as much as three feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travelers, and shutting down the nation's capital and its largest city.

After days of weather warnings, most of the 80 million people in the storm's path heeded requests to stay home and off the roads, which were largely deserted. Yet at least 18 deaths were blamed on the weather, resulting from car crashes, shoveling snow, and hypothermia. And more snow was to come, with dangerous conditions expected to persist until early Sunday, forecasters warned.

"This is going to be one of those generational events, where your parents talk about how bad it was," Ryan Maue, a meteorologist for WeatherBell Analytics, said from Tallahassee, Florida, which also saw some flakes.

The system was mammoth, dropping snow from the Gulf Coast to New England. By afternoon, areas near Washington had surpassed 30 inches. The heaviest unofficial report was in a rural area of West Virginia, not far from Harper's Ferry, with 40 inches.

As the storm picked up, forecasters increased their snow predictions for New York and points north and warned areas nearly as far north as Boston to expect heavy snow.

"This is kind of a Top 10 snowstorm," and likely a Top 5 for New York and Washington, said weather service winter storm expert Paul Kocin, who cowrote a two-volume textbook on blizzards.

In New York, three people died while shoveling snow in Queens and Staten Island. The normally bustling streets around Rockefeller Center, Penn Station, and other landmarks were mostly empty. Those who did venture out walked down the middle of snow-covered streets to avoid even deeper drifts on the sidewalks.

With Broadway shows dark, thin crowds shuffled through a different kind of Great White Way in Times Square.

As recently as Friday night, New York officials had expected the storm to top out at 18 inches. But that prediction jumped to 25 inches Saturday morning and to 28 by evening. More than 19 inches had fallen on Central Park by late afternoon.

Officials imposed a travel ban in the city, ordering all nonemergency vehicles off the roads. Commuter rails and above-ground segments of the nation's biggest subway system shut down too, along with buses.

In Washington, monuments that would typically be busy with tourists stood vacant. In the morning, the steps of the Lincoln Memorial had not been cleared of snow and looked almost like a ski slope. All mass transit in the capital was to be shut down through Sunday.

Drivers skidded off snowy, icy roads in accidents that killed several people as the storm raged Friday and Saturday. Those killed included a 4-year-old boy in North Carolina, a Kentucky transportation worker who was plowing highways, another Kentucky man whose car collided with a salt truck, and a woman whose husband scaled a 300-foot-embankment to report that the couple's car had plunged down it and killed her.

An Ohio teenager sledding behind an all-terrain vehicle was hit by a truck and killed, and two people died of hypothermia in southwest Virginia. In North Carolina, a man whose car had veered off an icy-covered road was arrested on charges of killing a motorist who stopped to help.

Elsewhere, drivers were marooned for hours in snow-choked highways in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The snow alone would have been enough to bring the East Coast to a halt. But it was whipped into a maelstrom by winds that reached 75 m.p.h. at Dewey Beach, Del., and Langley Air Force Base, Va., the weather service said.

Stranded travelers included Defense Secretary Ash Carter, whose high-tech aircraft, known as the Doomsday Plane, couldn't land at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland after returning from Europe. Carter was rerouted to Tampa, Fla., where he planned to wait for better weather.

Elsewhere across the country:

Georgia. Utilities had restored power to more than 66,000 customers since the storm began there early Friday, though a few thousand more were still without service, a Georgia Power spokesman said.

Maryland. A 60-year-old man shoveling snow in the Fort Washington area died after an apparent heart attack, Prince George's County Fire/EMS Department spokesman Mark Brady said. In Montgomery County, north of Washington, roofs collapsed on a condominium complex's utility building and on a large barn.

North Carolina. Six people, including a 4-year-old boy, were killed in wrecks amid the storm, authorities said. And a man was arrested on charges of killing a motorist who stopped to help after his car slid off an ice-covered road outside Charlotte.

Tennessee. Nashville saw its heaviest snowfall in nearly 20 years as the storm caused gridlock on streets and highways in Middle Tennessee.

West Virginia. As many as 200 vehicles, most of them tractor-trailers, were stranded overnight Friday on Interstate 77 north of Charleston. The logjam was cleared by noon Saturday, with a fleet of wreckers pulling out stuck vehicles.