Forecasts of a potentially brutal storm had prompted airlines to cancel 5,000 flights through the weekend.

Gulf Today Report

Thousands of flights in the United States were cancelled on Saturday as parts of the East Coast braced for a shellacking by a powerful winter storm packing heavy snow and high winds.

Some 3,400 flights were already cancelled for Saturday travelling within, into or out of the United States, according to flight tracker FlightAware. Cancellations on Friday totalled more than 1,450.

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Residents of New York and New England hunkered down on Saturday for a fierce Nor'easter bringing high winds, deep cold and up to two feet (60 cm) of snow, a blizzard predicted to be one of the worst in recent memory.

Places in the North East, including New York and Boston, were expected to bear the brunt of the far-reaching system, which is also predicted to pummel the Mid-Atlantic.

Snow covers cars in a parking lot as a snowplough clears the road.

Salt machines and snowplows were at the ready in New York, where Mayor Eric Adams tweeted that a foot (30 centimeters) of snow was predicted, but warned that "Mother Nature has a tendency to do what she wants."

Forecasts of a potentially brutal storm, which moved up the East Coast after forming in the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolinas, had prompted airlines to cancel 5,000 flights through the weekend and delay more than 8,000.

The governors of Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York all declared states of emergency, warned of likely power outages and urged residents to stay off the roads on Saturday.

"This is going to be a very big storm, probably one of the biggest we’ve experienced in the last few years. Conditions are expected to make travel nearly impossible, and we’re urging everyone, to the extent possible to stay home tonight and tomorrow," Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker told a news conference.

The blizzard comes on the heels of a similar winter storm that blanketed a swath of Eastern North America -- from Georgia to Canada -- just two weeks ago, cutting power to thousands of homes and also disrupting thousands of flights.