Washington braces for second icy blast

A second major snow storm in less than a week is blowing toward the Washington area, where federal government offices were closed for a second day and utility workers struggled to restore power knocked out by a weekend blizzard.

The storm could leave as much as 20 inches of new snow in Washington and 18 inches near Philadelphia - a Northeast travel hub - by Wednesday night. Powerful winds and snow were expected to hit the East Coast by the afternoon.

Parts of the region were already buried under nearly 3 feet of snow.

Airlines that shut down flights to Washington over the weekend warned that more would be canceled and that travellers who didn't depart by tonight were likely out of luck.

The storm hit the Midwest last last night (NZ time), closing schools and greeting commuters with slick, slushy roads in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago. In Chicago, Southwest Airlines canceled all of its flights at Midway International Airport through until tomorrow.

The storm that began Friday closed schools, and some 230,000 federal workers in Washington had Monday and Tuesday off. Power was still out for tens of thousands of homes and businesses, and utilities said deep snow was hindering some crews trying to fix damaged power lines before the next storm hits.

The snowbound US Senate met only for a few minutes yesterday, and was scheduled to hold two votes later today, as Senate leaders tried to bring members back to Washington to take up a jobs package. The House of Representatives called off all votes for the week because many members couldn't get back from their districts.

The White House, meanwhile, moved a Black History Month concert featuring Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson and Natalie Cole up a day to try to beat the storm.

In rural Maryland, a state police helicopter rescued a man stranded in a remote mountaintop home where he had been staying alone with no electricity since the storm this past weekend.

Residents worried they might be stuck at home hit grocery stores to stock up. A Safeway grocery store in the Dupont Circle area of Washington had milk and some bread, but many other items were picked over from the last storm.

Washington and Philadelphia each need about another 9 inches to give the cities their snowiest winters since 1884, the first year records were kept.

Meanwhile, a US$20 ($29) cab ride to the airport skyrocketed to the "snow rate" of US$100 in America's capital, and those travellers who could get to the airport or train station still had to haggle or wait in long lines to escape the snowbound region.

The most pressing matter: get out before more of the white stuff comes today.

"I'm done with city, urban snow life," said Chris Vaughan, a Washington resident who was able to rebook a flight to go skiing in Utah.

He dodged the pricey cab fare by having a friend drop him off at the airport - in exchange for a bottle of wine.

- AP