The Washington region awoke Sunday, battered by one of the biggest storms in local history, to face a monumental dig out that is likely to hobble the area well into the workweek.

Morning brought the sight of mountains of plowed snow and landscapes buried in white.

The epic nor’easter of 2016 closed its 36-hour reign over the D.C. region Saturday night, moving up the Atlantic coast, hammering other cities in its path, and leaving in its wake a light breeze, cold temperatures and clear skies.

With the return of the sun, thoughts turned to Monday, and the start of the week, when it appeared the storm recovery could extend the region’s shutdown.

But first comes the big dig: How to move it all? And where to put it?

The blizzard brought Washington and its suburbs to a standstill, with all but a few major highways made impassable by more than two feet of snow.

The winds that spared the region for the storm’s first 24 hours arrived at gale strength Saturday afternoon, pushing snow back onto the few cleared roads and sidewalks and threatening to take down power lines that serve 6 million people. But there were relatively few power outages. Local utilities were reporting only a handful Sunday morning.

The last of the snow fell in the region around 11:45 p.m. Saturday. Snowfall totals ranged from 10 to 35 inches and more, with the heaviest accumulation to the north and west of the city, outside the Capital Beltway.

Shepherdstown, W.Va., on the Potomac River just upstream from Harpers Ferry, got 40 inches, the National Weather Service said.

As most people sought to be rid of the snow, CBS reported that nurses at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, went out into the storm Saturday and brough back tubs of snow for sick children to play with.

Meanwhile, Interstates 70 in Western Maryland and I-270 were reopening Sunday in stages, according to Charlie Gischlar, a spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration.

The highways were closed Saturday night after several tractor trailers got stuck on an incline on northbound I-270 near the Montgomery – Frederick County line.

Gischlar said that roads elsewhere in Maryland are good and getting better by the hour. But he still urged that motorists stay off the roads. “There is still a lot of work to be done,” he said. “This is our clean-up day. Even though the roadway may look clear, there is still a lot of work to be done. Every hour will be better.”

A Leesburg, Virginia, man had a heart attack and died early Sunday morning while trudging through waist-deep snow in an attempt to go home after working at a convenient store that had stayed open through the storm, police said.

The man, whose identity had not yet been released but was in his 50s, collapsed around 2 a.m., police said. A resident saw him fall into the snow, called 911 and pulled the man inside a nearby home. Emergency responders were unable to revive the man.

“If the gentleman had been walking home on a sunny day, he probably would be alive,” said Leesburg Police Lt. Brian Rourke, attributing the fatality to the snow.

The man had tried to drive home after his shift at the convenience store, but abandoned his car after it got stuck and tried to walk the rest of the way home, Rourke said.

Virginia authorities have attributed at least four other deaths to storm-related causes, and the storm had claimed at least 19 other fatalities nationwide as of Sunday morning.

Other deaths included traffic fatalities, heart attacks while shoveling snow and two hypothermia deaths. One shoveling death was that of a 49-year old man from Abingdon, Maryland, northeast of Baltimore.

Authorities warned that it would take days before all the roads became passable. With Sunday’s sunny forecast, officials feared that people housebound since Friday would be eager to get out.

“Please do not go out and get on the road (Sunday) or Monday,” Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D, said Saturday afternoon. “We are working primary roads right now, and then beginning next week, we will get into the secondary roads.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, D, said: “There are too many people on the streets, both driving and walking. We need you to stay home.”

Further north, officials declared snow emergencies, banning drivers from the roads. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, imposed a travel ban in New York City. In Baltimore, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, only emergency vehicles were allowed on city streets. Why not the District?

“We want our community to heed our recommendations, our concerns, and get off the road,” Bowser said. “But more than that, we cannot afford to divert our emergency services to police a travel ban.”

A Maryland State Highway Administration spokesman lambasted SUV owners out on joyrides. “There’s a lot of people in four-wheel drives that are just kind of out cruising around, and they’re getting in the way of snow operations,” spokesman Charlie Gischlar said.

Accumulations in many places around D.C. neared two feet, or more.

The enormousness of the storm will be calculated after it’s all over, when the snowfall totals are collected from the region’s three major airports and other less prestigious sources.

But it certainly will rival the totals from the record for the biggest two-day snowstorm in Washington. That was set Jan. 27-28, 1922, when 26 inches fell. That snowfall collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre in Adams Morgan, killing more than 100 people. And this weekend’s snow eclipsed the biggest winter storm of this young century, “Snowmageddon” of Feb. 5-6, 2010, when 17.8 inches fell.

Around 5 p.m., Snowzilla officially met the criteria for a blizzard, with three straight hours of wind gusts at more than 35 mph, visibility of a quarter-mile or less, and snow and blowing snow.

The magnitude of the storm, with its delivery of three inches of snow per hour, paralyzed the East Coast from Richmond to New York. Roads and public transit shut down in New York and Washington, and low-lying coastal regions from Cape Hatteras, N.C., to Long Island, N.Y., prepared for flooding Sunday and Monday.

The low-pressure system fueling the snowstorm had generated hurricane-force gusts at sea, and the forecast was for waves as tall as a three-story building.

Airlines canceled almost 10,000 flights in and out of the stricken region and said they did not expect to resume regular schedules until Monday. Even then, it will be a few days before air travel returns to normal.

Runways at Reagan National and Dulles International airports were expected to remain closed Sunday while crews cleared snow.

The U.S. Postal Service gave up on attempts to deliver the mail Saturday in the Washington region and said carriers would try again Monday. The agency asked homeowners to dig out their mailboxes and clear sidewalks.

The Metro system’s buses and rail lines were to remain shut down through the weekend. Metro hoped to resume operations Monday. “Despite all the work so far, massive cleanup effort yet to come,” Metro tweeted Sunday.

State police in Virginia said they responded to 1,100 accidents statewide, the majority of them in Northern Virginia.

Road crews around the region were focused on clearing major arteries, so residents were cautioned not to expect their neighborhood streets to be cleared soon.