What it looks like when the sky dumps a massive amount of snow on America (leaving one happy Panda)

Snowmageddon. Snowzilla. Snowpocalypse. Even Snowniño.

Whatever name you prefer, one thing was clear: Saturday's snow storm on the East Coast of the United States was massive. Five states saw snowfall of 3 ft or more, and the major centres of New York city and Washington DC were buried under snow.
In New York, travel bans were imposed Saturday afternoon and lifted on Sunday morning, to ensure people would not be caught out in the middle of the storm. The video above a time lapse offers a look at how the snow piled up in the Big Apple, where this was declared the second biggest storm after one in 1869.

Fortunately, the meteorologists had fully predicted just what was coming with warnings for storm having been issued earlier in the week. "It seems the weather forecasters got it right this time," New York governor Andrew Cuomo said at a Saturday morning press conference. "There is a blizzard."

Washington, DC had reportedly not witnessed a snow storm of such intensity in over a 100 years, with the capital suddenly reeling under the white blanket. And the damage wasn't only concentrated on big cities.

A CNN report said, "one of the hardest-hit locales was Glengary, West Virginia, a small town about 85 miles northwest of Washington, which preliminary figures show received 42 inches of snow."

Despite the travel bans and warning some people made a good time of the storm, combining skiing and snowboarding into a form of skitching – hitching on cars in skis.

This Panda called Tian Tian, who lives at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, was seen gleefully rolling around and trying to completely cover himself in the snow that dumped itself over Washington, DC.

The storm caused flooding and strong winds too. NPR reported, "farther south, the storm's greatest impact wasn't in inches of snowfall but quarter-inches of ice. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as ice and high winds combined to rip down power lines..."

Associated Press attributed 29 deaths to the storm.

Most of the deaths were from car crashes on snowy or icy roads. Four were caused by overexertion while shovelling snow, according to news reports.