US: In its two centuries of existence it's unlikely that the Mayo cottage rebuilt last year on the Irish Hunger memorial in New York has ever been weighed down with as much snow.
And it has been many years since the early-season lighting of the 75-foot Christmas Tree at the Rockefeller Plaza has been complemented by such Christmas-like weather.
The heaviest snowfall in two years dumped eight inches of snow on New York yesterday, more than the total that fell throughout all of last winter.
The storm, which also shut down schools and offices in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Newark, disrupted road traffic and grounded many flights at New York airports.
For a time the snow fell at the rate of more than an inch an hour in Manhattan, causing near white-out conditions.
A Delta shuttle that left LaGuardia Airport for Washington on time at 7.30 a.m. was turned back at Washington's Reagan National Airport, then diverted from LaGuardia to Hartford, Connecticut.
Further south, icing snapped powerlines leaving 1.6 million homes and businesses without electricity from Oklahoma to the Carolinas, more than the number affected by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. The storm was blamed for at least 17 deaths, mostly from traffic accidents.
At New York's 70th annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockerfeller Plaza, Mayor Michael Bloomberg switched on 30,000 golden lights on the 70-year-old Norway spruce. At the same event last year spectators watched in T-shirts amid record-breaking warm temperatures.