A powerful nor'easter that left snow - almost 3 feet deep in spots - from North Carolina to Maine may have kept youngsters out of school, but it didn't keep them home.
Plenty hit ski areas after Tuesday's storm canceled classes and closed businesses in 16 states."There are so many school cancellations and a lot of these kids were home for Christmas. Parents don't want them home another day," said David Crowley, manager of Wachusett Mountain Ski Area in Princeton, Mass.
Some schools closed again Wednesday or opened late because of icy roads. The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and left at least 13 people dead.
In West Virginia, residents bombarded by as much as 2 feet of snow started digging out.
"I just came back from Florida right after Christmas," said Dixie Kennedy of Buckhannon, W.Va. "I wish I'd stayed down there."
Had she waited a week, Kennedy might have gotten her wish. Hundreds of passengers were stuck at Miami International Airport and other airports after the second storm in a week forced nearly all major airlines to cancel or delay flights to most Northeastern cities.
Airline passengers weren't the only ones stuck. Up to 400 vehicles were stranded in a seven-mile backup after a truck accident on Interstate 77 near Parkersburg, W.Va. School buses took motorists to shelters.
Among those taking refuge overnight were Jackie Medina of Benton Harbor, Mich., her sister, her boyfriend and her four children, ages 4 months to 8 years. "They're having so much fun out there, it's going to be hard settling them down," she said of the children.
The heaviest snow was in the central Appalachians and upper Ohio Valley. Thirty-three inches fell in Waynesburg in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The wind and cold were expected to ease Wednesday in the East as the storm moved into Canada.
The weather-related deaths included a boy who slid into traffic in New Hampshire, a man hit by a falling tree in West Virginia and a New York contractor who slipped and hit his head on a plow. Two women were killed in traffic accidents and eight men collapsed after shoveling snow.
In addition, five people died of carbon-monoxide poisoning from a faulty heater in Louisiana and two children died in a Florida mobile home fire that officials blamed on a space heater.
National Guardsmen in eastern Kentucky used armored transports to move snowbound patients, carry power crews and deliver fuel after up to 9 inches of snow knocked out electricity.
Juanita Vance, who has emphysema and uses an oxygen machine, called a medical supply company for backup oxygen when her power failed. "They got a four-wheel-drive and they got it to me," said Vance, who lives near the Virginia border in rural Virgie, Ky.
At Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., where classes were called off, Don Taylor said he and his fraternity brothers would "be drinking a little beer, watching movies, having snowball battles, playing a little football."
Others also refused to let a few feet of snow stand in their way.
Donnan Huggler put Boston commuters to shame, donning a woolly cap, gloves, storm pants and a jacket to make his rounds as a bicycle messenger. He made 14 deliveries by noon.
"It's the wind that gets me," Huggler said. "I'm going along and hit the intersection and, wham, I get hit with 50-mile-an-hour wind."
Ben Bailey walked out of his Charleston, W.Va., home and found a thick tree limb had fallen on the roof of his convertible.
"I wasn't going to have the top down today anyway," he said.