Federal offices in Washington, D.C. will be closed on Monday thanks to a powerful blizzard that dumped more than 60 centimetres of snow on the U.S. capital.
The Office of Personnel Management made the decision on Sunday afternoon due to safety concerns, according to Sedelta Verble, a spokesperson for the agency.
The closing will cost about $100 million. About 230,000 government employees will stay home, but emergency employees were still expected to report for work.
Meanwhile, crews were working Sunday to clear streets and restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes.
The National Weather Service called Saturday's storm "historic." It came close to breaking snowfall records across the region.
Parts of Ohio received 30 cm of snow, and 60 cm or more were reported in Washington, D.C., Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The most snow fell on parts of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia, where close to 90 cm of snow was reported.
Power outages continue to affect hundreds of thousands of people along the East Coast, from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Virginia. Although some roads have reopened, officials are warning residents of treacherous and icy driving conditions.
The snow fell too quickly for clean-up crews to keep up. And although officials in Washington had hoped that the streets would be ready for the Monday morning work rush, it was unclear Sunday afternoon whether that would be the case.
Nearly 46 cm of snow was recorded at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., which remains closed. In neighbouring Virginia, the snowfall record for the Dulles International Airport was smashed, with 81 cm of snow recorded. Flights at Dulles have resumed, but are still severely limited.
On Saturday, forecasters had predicted that the storm, dubbed "Snowmaggedon" by U.S. President Barack Obama, was on its way to breaking Washington's previous snowfall record of 71 cm, set in 1922. The 46 cm snow total is the city's fourth-highest.
Further north, Philadelphia's 72 cm of snow was just six cm shy of the 1996 record snowfall. Despite the heavy snow, most public transportation had resumed by Sunday afternoon. In Pittsburgh, bus and light-rail service was suspended.
The epic blizzard wreaked havoc on the region, causing the states of Maryland, Virginia and Delaware to declare emergencies as the heavy, wet snow toppled power lines, collapsed roofs and contributed to thousands of collisions.
In one of the thousands of collisions, a father and son were killed when they tried to help someone stuck on a highway in Virginia.
Sunday morning, 59,000 people remained without power in New Jersey. More than 90,000 in the state lost power during the peak of the storm.
But under clear skies Sunday, after the snowfall had stopped, residents took time to marvel at the beauty of the storm.
Hundreds of people crowded into Washington's Dupont Circle for a snowball fight that was organized online. One long-time resident told The Associated Press that the storm had created "the Epcot Center version of Washington."
The roads of the U.S. capital, usually choked with vehicles, were quiet early Sunday. People took advantage of the snow to ski and photograph the wintry scenes.
Saturday's snow comes less than two months after more than 40 cm of snow were dumped on Washington in a storm on Dec. 19.
Such heavy snowfalls are rare for the area. The National Weather Service says that since 1870, there have only been 13 storms in Washington in which more than 30 cm of snow fell at a time.
With files from The Associated Press
