A Northeast blizzard for the books

In Massachusetts and Rhode Island, residents were urged to stay home during the worst hours of the storm. New York City canceled vacations for all sanitation employees and called workers in on their days off to help with snow removal.

While there were some deaths attributed to the storm, authorities say the early warnings and weekend arrival kept the fatalities far lower than they could have been. One man in Ohio died after he slipped through ice. On highways in Pennsylvania, police reported dozens of accidents.

Cold temperatures caused some troubles, too: Temperatures in Maine fell to record levels. It was 29 below in Bangor. Winds of some 50 m.p.h. pushed wind chill readings to 8 below zero in both New York and New Jersey.

Aside from taking out their snow shovels, though, many Americans seemed to enjoy the winter storm. In Shohola, Pa., where the two feet of snow is deeper than some dogs are tall, the blizzard was greeted as a welcome annual event that brings neighbors out of their winter doldrums. Liam O'Connor woke up and had one thought: "Beautiful, very pretty to look at." Then he headed for his snow shovel and blower.

By Sunday morning in Chicago, with just a few stray flakes adding to a foot of snow, runners, dog walkers, and kids reveled in the rare experience of pristine powder in Lincoln Park. "I kinda wait for a storm like this, just for the skiing part," says Brad Zoller, a pilot, as he breaks fresh tracks on his cross-country skis. "I love snow."

Nearby, a regular group of dogwalkers chat through scarves as their pets bound and chase snowballs. "She likes everything about the snow, the deeper the better," says Charlie, a middle-aged Chicagoan barely visible beneath his layers of clothes, as Genie, his saluki, frolics nearby. "She's from the desert, but you can't tell."

For those with sleds and skis, the snow provided a perfect playground, but not so for those with luggage. Across the country, frustrated travelers were delayed from reaching their travel destinations. Logan International Airport in Boston was still shut down Sunday morning. Philadelphia International Airport was shut for six hours Saturday. Airports were also temporarily closed in Hartford, Conn., and Westchester County, N.Y., while Chicago's O'Hare delayed hundreds of flights.

As bad as the latest storm was, it doesn't compare to some in the past - and shows how far the nation has come in being able to cope with massive amounts of snow. One of the most infamous storms was the blizzard of 1888, when drifts crawled up to the second-floor windows in New York.

The city was completely cut off from the rest of the country. To get messages out, they had to use the transatlantic cable to send them to London first, so they could be rerouted to Boston. More than 400 people died, many because they were stranded in the freezing elevated trains.

That blizzard "is of almost folklorish interest to folks in the Northeast," says Randy Cerveny, a meteorologist at Arizona State University in Tempe.

• Staff writers Amanda Paulson in Chicago and Alexandra Marks in Shohola, Pa., contributed to this report. Wire service material was also used.

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