By PHILIP MARCE­LO-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

BOSTON (AP) — Peo­ple from New York City to Maine awak­ened Sat­ur­day to half a foot (15 cen­time­ters) of snow, and fore­cast­ers warned that could more than quadru­ple as a pow­er­ful nor’east­er kicked up blind­ing bliz­zard con­di­tions with high winds and the po­ten­tial for wide­spread pow­er out­ages and coastal flood­ing.

Parts of 10 states and some ma­jor pop­u­la­tion cen­ters — Philadel­phia, New York and Boston — were in the path of the storm, which was ex­pect­ed to rage through­out the day.

Air­lines can­celed more than 4,500 flights at some of the na­tion’s busiest air­ports, ac­cord­ing to FlightAware. Am­trak sus­pend­ed or lim­it­ed ser­vice on the Boston-to-Wash­ing­ton cor­ri­dor.

In West Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, a trac­tor-trail­er jack­nifed on snow-slicked In­ter­state 84, clos­ing sev­er­al west­bound lanes.

Of­fi­cials from Vir­ginia to Maine warned peo­ple to stay off the roads amid po­ten­tial white­out con­di­tions. The storm’s sav­ing grace: It was hit­ting on a week­end, with schools closed and few com­muters.

Rhode Is­land, all of which was un­der a bliz­zard warn­ing, banned all non­emer­gency road trav­el start­ing at 8 a.m.

“This is se­ri­ous. We’re ready for this storm, and we al­so need Rhode Is­landers to be ready,” Gov. Dan Mc­K­ee said. “The best way to han­dle this storm is to stay home to­mor­row.”

Delaware al­lowed on­ly es­sen­tial per­son­nel to dri­ve in two of its three coun­ties. Mass­a­chu­setts, where fore­cast­ers said some iso­lat­ed pock­ets could get as much as 30 inch­es (76 cen­time­ters) of snow, banned heavy trucks from in­ter­state high­ways for most of Sat­ur­day.

Shop­pers crammed stores Fri­day to stock up on food, gen­er­a­tors and snow­blow­ers ahead of the nor’east­er, a type of storm so named be­cause its winds typ­i­cal­ly blow from the north­east as it churns up the East Coast.

Many hardy New Eng­lan­ders took the storm in stride.

Dave McGillivray, race di­rec­tor for the Boston Marathon, jok­ing­ly in­vit­ed the pub­lic to his sub­ur­ban Boston home on Sat­ur­day for a free snow shov­el­ing clin­ic.

“I will pro­vide the dri­ve­way and mul­ti­ple walk­ways to en­sure your train­ing is con­duct­ed in the most life­like sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

Marc Rud­kows­ki, 28, bought French bread and wine Fri­day at the Star Mar­ket in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, along with bal­loons and toys for his dog, who turned 1 on Fri­day.

“He’s go­ing to love it,” Rud­kows­ki said. “He’s a snow dog.”

But there were some con­cerns about hoard­ing amid on­go­ing sup­ply chain is­sues caused by the pan­dem­ic. New Eng­land su­per­mar­ket gi­ant Stop & Shop plead­ed with cus­tomers to prac­tice re­straint.

“We ask shop­pers to buy what they need and save some for their neigh­bors,” the chain said in a state­ment.

Parts of 10 states were un­der bliz­zard warn­ings: Maine, New Hamp­shire, Mass­a­chu­setts, Rhode Is­land, Con­necti­cut, New York, New Jer­sey, Delaware, Mary­land and Vir­ginia. Ar­eas clos­est to the coast were ex­pect­ed to bear the brunt of the storm, which could bring wind gusts as high as 70 mph (113 kph) in New Eng­land.

Coastal New Jer­sey was fore­cast to get as much as 18 inch­es (46 cen­time­ters) of snow and east­ern Long Is­land up to 17 inch­es (43 cen­time­ters). Philadel­phia, New York City, and parts of the Del­mar­va Penin­su­la in Delaware, Mary­land and Vir­ginia could get 10 inch­es (25 cen­time­ters) or more.

Vir­ginia, where a bliz­zard this month strand­ed hun­dreds of mo­torists for hours on In­ter­state 95, did not hes­i­tate to get re­sources at the ready. In Mary­land, the gov­er­nor mo­bi­lized the Na­tion­al Guard.

Wash­ing­ton and Bal­ti­more were spared the worst of the storm.

Snow could fall as fast as 5 inch­es (near­ly 13 cen­time­ters) per hour in spots, in­clud­ing Con­necti­cut, where of­fi­cials wor­ried about hav­ing enough snow­plow dri­vers amid short­ages caused by the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and oth­er is­sues.

The worst of the storm was ex­pect­ed to blow by Sun­day morn­ing in­to Cana­da, where sev­er­al provinces were un­der warn­ings.

One sav­ing grace, at least in parts of Mass­a­chu­setts: The snow should fall light and flaky be­cause it is com­ing with cold weath­er that dries it out, said Ju­dah Co­hen, a win­ter storm ex­pert for the com­mer­cial firm At­mos­pher­ic En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search.

That means lousy snow­balls — and snow that’s less ca­pa­ble of snap­ping tree branch­es and tear­ing down pow­er lines.

Con­tribut­ing to this re­port were As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Jeff McMil­lan in Scran­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia; Steve LeBlanc in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts; William J. Kole in War­wick, Rhode Is­land; David Klep­per in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Is­land; and Sarah Brum­field in Wash­ing­ton.