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WASHINGTON: Americans pining for a white Christmas got more than they bargained for as a record-breaking snowstorm closed airports and roadways across the northeastern United States, putting a damper on the holiday's biggest shopping weekend.
Just days before the December 25 holiday, the eastern seaboard from North Carolina to New England was digging out Sunday from the worst blizzard in years, which closed train and bus service, paralysed air traffic and left hundreds of thousands of residents without power in some areas.
Many churches cancelled Sunday services, as local officials urged residents to hunker down indoors as record snowfall wreaked havoc on the roadways.
And the storm was a blow to the already reeling retail sector, which had been counting on cash registers loudly ringing on the Saturday before Christmas - traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year - to make up for weeks of lacklustre sales.
"I think we can safely say that sales in the Washington region were crippled," Ellen Davis, vice president of the National Retail Federation, told AFP.
She said the impact of the inclement weather went far beyond just making it harder for customers to snap up holiday gifts.
Without shoppers out and about at shopping malls and along America's high streets "people weren't eating at restaurants, there wasn't any impulse buying," Davis said.
With some 15 billion dollars of all nationwide sales occurring on the last weekend before Christmas, many shoppers trying to make up for lost time were likely to confront closes stores, unploughed roads and limited transportation options.
But Davis said the impact of the blizzard on Christmas shopping would be felt differently across the country, depending on when the storm hit.
While Washington, which received a total of 40 centimetres of snow, woke up Saturday swathed in a deep white blanket under clear skies, the flakes were flying at the same time in New York and points north.
"What we heard in New York is that couple of flurries get people more in the spirit of shopping," Davis told AFP.
As the monster storm barrelled northward, the National Weather Service on Sunday posted blizzard warnings for southern New England, including Boston.
"Heavy snow and strong winds could potentially cause localised whiteout conditions along the New England coast through early Sunday afternoon," the NWS said, predicting "local amounts of up to two feet (61 centimetres) possible where heavy snow persists the longest."
The storm at one point stretched some 800 kilometres across a dozen states, affecting around a quarter of the US population.
Much of the East Coast, home to tens of millions of Americans, turned into a winter wonderland, even if the conditions were as perilous as they were scenic.
The NWS said it was the heaviest snow storm ever to hit the US capital region so early in December, in an area where snow does not usually fall until January or later, if at all.
Three people died on Virginia roads on Saturday as some 3,000 accidents shut down interstates for several hours, according to the state's department of emergency management. The Virginia Department of Health confirmed one other storm-related death.
And bus service around the region ground as road remained in many places slippery at best and in other places totally unploughed, making movement still difficult, hours after the storm had moved on.
"There are huge piles of snow lining the edges of streets and blocking the bus stops," said John Catoe, the general manager of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The transit authority also operates the area's regional subway system in Washington, Virginia and Maryland ran trains underground train service only, closing 39 of the system's 86 stations.
Service slowly returned to the capital region's main airports after hundreds of flights were cancelled on Saturday, stranding thousands of passengers on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
The annual year-end holiday travel season that official began on Saturday, December 19 and continues through Saturday, January 2, just after the New Year's holiday.
Meanwhile, Davis said that resourceful shoppers, rather than deferring their holiday purchases, likely would make up for lost time this week in the last few shopping days before Christmas on Friday.
"You might see more people choose to purchase gift cards," she said. "I would imagine there were people online all day yesterday as opposed to being out" at the shopping malls, she said. - AFP/de
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