Up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow were forecast to fall on New York by Saturday and snowplows worked through the night to keep major avenues clear.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a rare closure of all public schools, handing 1.1 million students an unexpected long weekend. Columbia and other city universities also closed for the day.

Airlines posted major delays and cancelled hundreds of flights at Newark airport in New Jersey and JFK airport in New York.

Power was lost in homes throughout the region, with energy company Con Edison reporting 36,500 outages in suburban New York and about 700 in the city itself.

In New Hampshire, Governor John Lynch declared a state of emergency after the storm knocked out power to more than 330,000 customers.

"High winds and heavy rains have downed trees and power lines across our state, and it is important that the state has all its resources available to manage this situation," Lynch said.

Thousands more homes were without power in Vermont, the government there said.

The National Weather Service described the storm as an "intense area of low pressure" that stayed nearly stationary over the region for more than a day, but was due to weaken by Saturday.

AccuWeather.com said the "extremely powerful storm" caused "whiteouts along the I-95 (highway) stretch from Philadelphia to New York City."

"Downed trees and power outages will also continue to plague a large part of the Northeast. The storm will slowly weaken today into the weekend, allowing winds to slowly slacken a bit," the website said.

Nearly 17 inches had already accumulated on Central Park in Manhattan by early morning, local NY1 television reported.

The snow was wet and heavy and local authorities urged residents to stay out of parks and away from trees.

On Thursday, a man died in Central Park when a branch collapsed under the weight of snow and fell on him as he strolled along a picturesque path known as Literary Walk.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the victim had just left work and wanted to "enjoy the thrill of a winter walk" when the tragedy occurred.

"We're really advising everyone to be very, very careful when they are outside in these conditions."

The storm was expected to lose its sting later Friday as snowfalls weakened. Only light flurries were forecast overnight and into Saturday.

Bloomberg said an army of sanitation workers was fighting to clear the city.

Almost 4,400 workers split in two 12-hour shifts were using 365 salt spreaders and 1,600 plows, he said.

"We're going to have a long weekend of clearing snow in various parts of the city and hopefully Monday morning the city will be back to normal," Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty said.

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