Supermarkets were besieged by shoppers desperate to stock up on provisions, as official warnings of the potential record-setting snowfall blared out on local radio, television and websites, urging residents to be prepared to stay inside for up to five days.

The second big snowstorm of the winter could dump a record 30 inches (76 centimeters) of snow in the Washington area, said the National Weather Service, where meteorologists have been upping their predictions for total snow accumulation throughout the day.

"Even if you only get 20 inches, that will be the third highest snowfall ever in a single storm. Downtown DC has only had two storms of 20 inches or more in the past 100 years," Klaus Wolter, a climatologist at the University of Colorado told AFP.

"The highest ever -- 28 inches in 1922 -- that is not impossible," Wolter said.

Courts, schools, government offices, even military bases closed early Friday to beat the storm which started to dump snow on the capital and suburbs in Virginia and Maryland late Friday morning and was forecast to continue through the night and well into Saturday.

Commuter trains and buses, and hundreds of flights out of the area's three airports were cancelled Friday and into the weekend.

The Washington Metro warned it would stop running above-ground trains when there were eight inches (20 cm) of snow on the tracks.

The governors of Virginia and Maryland have declared a state of emergency, a move that puts the National Guard on alert.

"The National Guard has more than 100 Humvees and five-ton trucks and military ambulances ready to respond" in Maryland, Governor Martin O'Malley said.

If the National Weather Center's high-end snow predictions fall on Rockville in Maryland, some 20 miles northwest of Washington, the suburban town could be blanketed in 35 inches (89 cm) of white stuff by late Saturday.

That's a lot even in cities that know how to deal with snow, a category in which Washington cannot claim to be included.

Last year, then newly sworn-in President Barack Obama, who previously lived in Chicago, scoffed at the US capital's tendency to panic over a few snowflakes after classes at his daughters' school were canceled because of "some ice."

"Folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things when it comes to the weather," the president said.

But the White House acknowledged that this storm was not to be sneezed at.

"Even a transplanted Hawaiian through Chicago has sufficient respect for a forecast of nearly two feet of snow," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said of Obama.

Holly Bailey, a writer who lives in Washington's upscale Georgetown neighborhood, described scenes of chaos at a local Whole Foods supermarket as normally genteel Washingtonians lost their cool in the rush to beat the big snow.

"The parking lot is road-rage central and there are people running down the street with bags trying to get in the store," Bailey told AFP.

The store's shoppers fared little better on Thursday.

"It was chaos. People were yelling. It was like a scene from a disaster movie," Bailey said.

Jane Bate, 41, who emigrated to the United States from the Philippines in March, headed out to a local supermarket early Friday after neighbors warned her to prepare for the worst.

"I got there at 7:00 am and there were really long queues, and the place looked like it had been ransacked," she told AFP.

Karen Morgan, a Canadian who lives in Rockville, waited to pick up her 12-year-old twins from school, which let out early on Friday, and marveled at the dire warnings and panic over how a snowstorm could stop Washington in its tracks.

"It's not like we're in the Montana wilderness and we're staying holed-up for a month and a half.

"This storm is like a bad haircut -- it will go away pretty quickly," she said.

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