Abogados de Inmigracion

In lower Manhattan, as snowflakes fell, cash-register lines at Anthropologie, Gap and Paragon Sports were long and the stores thronged. At Gap, dozens lined up, as clerks worked all eight registers. At Paragon Sports, winter-wear shoppers mixed with holiday shoppers and check-out lines on all three floors numbered 20 or more at a time, and expediters kept the lines moving efficiently.

Mr. Guiney expects portions of Long Island to see anywhere from 12 to 24 inches of snow by Sunday afternoon. In New York City, snowfall will be 10 to 16 inches, but the snowfall should end by early Sunday morning.

In addition to the broader human and economic threat such an event always poses, the storm could deter shoppers and hurt retailers eager to ring up sales on a critical weekend. "Super Saturday," the last Saturday before Christmas, is typically one of the biggest shopping days of the year, with an estimated $15 billion changing hands, according to weather consultancy Planalytics. The Northeast accounts for at least a quarter of those sales.

This year, the highly anticipated weekend is expected to be even more crucial to the retail industry. Shoppers procrastinated longer than ever in hopes of seeing the radical markdowns of last year. But retailers headed into the weekend feeling relatively positive, as they had planned inventories more conservatively this year, reducing the need to resort to sharp discounts to move excess inventory. Retail analysts had expected sales industrywide to be relatively flat this holiday but profits to climb on increasing margins.

If shoppers stay home, that prediction is in danger. Some sales may move to retailers' Web sites, but the e-commerce season had been expected to taper off after Friday, the last day of free-shipping deals.