Close to 20 inches of snow piled up at the nation’s capital as a blizzard pounded mid-Atlantic states Saturday, cutting power to hundreds of thousands in the region in what the president referred to as "Snowmaggedon." Snow was falling from southern Indiana eastward to New York City, Washington, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the New Jersey coast.

Big auto insurers will be examining past auto accident claims involving Toyota vehicles for possible subrogation action, an insurance arbitration executive predicted, as Allstate said it has a case review underway. Mark Bunim, president and chief executive of Case Closure--a New York-based insurance arbitration and mediation firm--said large auto insurers are “going to amalgamate their serious claims involving Toyotas over the past five or six months, and see how many of them are tied to or could be tied to the gas pedal recall.”

As hundreds of workers prepared to deploy Sunday to empty catch basins once again filled with mud and debris, all evacuation orders were lifted for residents of Southern California’s foothills. L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said the evacuation orders had been lifted, including for Paradise Valley in La Cañada Flintridge.

Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry said state officials are working with their counterparts in surrounding states to speed the flow of power repair supplies and other provisions to communities hard hit by the ice storm in late January. “We appreciate the cooperation from neighboring states and will continue to count on their support as we work to restore power in the affected communities,” Gov. Henry said in an announcement on the governor’s Web site.

Damage and loss from yesterday’s magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck offshore Northern California are expected to be less than $10 million, with insured losses a fraction of that, a risk modeling firm has reported. The moderate quake struck at 12:20 p.m. PST on Feb. 4, 2010, about 35 miles from Petolia and 50 miles from Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.