Another day, another storm, another mess.

Anyone who liked yesterday morning -- the shoveling, the slushy roads, the slippery sidewalks -- will be enamored with the weather today, if forecasts are correct.

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The National Weather Service anticipated freezing rain in the morning, changing to snow by afternoon or evening as temperatures dip. Several inches of new snow is possible, on top of the 2 to 8 inches that fell around the region Sunday night and yesterday morning. More precipitation is possible each day through Friday.

"People ought to be ready for the worst," weather service meteorologist Bob Reed said of today's forecast. "We're in a pattern right now where we don't get much of a break between [storms]. There's barely enough time to get the sidewalk shoveled."

The snow and ice caused traffic problems throughout the region yesterday and may have contributed to a fatal accident in Beaver County.

Some streets in and around Pittsburgh may still be as treacherous as an unshoveled sidewalk from the new half-foot of snow, and the city's budget cuts continue to be a factor, said Guy Costa, director of the Public Works Department. He said his department has 19 percent fewer snow plows and 12 percent fewer drivers on the road than last year.

"Every time it snows, it's five less drivers per shift. [Sunday] night we had 48 trucks out -- last year it was 53," Costa said. "With the cutbacks, it's going to take us longer to get to these streets. It's hard to do with limited resources."

He said the city has used 25,000 tons of rock salt already this winter. Most winters 30,000 tons are all that's required. Costa expected the $1.2 million budgeted for salt supplies this year to be depleted by week's end.

City crews followed their usual pattern of focusing on primary roads Sunday and early yesterday, he said, and were just starting on secondary streets after the morning rush hour when freezing rain began to fall. The new precipitation sent the trucks back to the primary roads for another sprinkling of salt.

The difficulty in clearing many side streets hampered garbage pickup around the city, and trash bags were left sitting at curbside at some residences. City officials said if crews failed to collect the trash as scheduled yesterday, residents should leave it where it is for pickup later in the week.

Costa said main streets that did not seem touched at all, like Grant Street and other main arteries Downtown, were indeed plowed. He said they were slushy because property owners were shoveling snow into the streets, where constant bus and car traffic spread it around.

The Pittsburgh school district and many others canceled classes yesterday rather than operate on a delayed schedule. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation spokesman Dick Skrinjar said that was a benefit to snow plow operators, who could do their job better because of less competition on the roads from school buses and other traffic.

"It was bad enough for most motorists, but if you had to be out, you were capable of getting where you wanted to go," Skrinjar said. "The morning rush hour on Green Tree Hill looked like any other day, except you had snow on the ground."

Tom Donatelli, Allegheny County public works director, said bringing in morning crews two hours earlier than normal, at 2 a.m., helped keep roads "in pretty decent shape." The department has spent about $40,000 on overtime this winter, he said.

Pittsburgh Public Schools canceled classes around 6 a.m., after announcing a two-hour delay the night before. Transportation Director Ted Vasser said the district's first cancellation of the year was based on both the snow on the ground, much of it untouched on secondary residential streets, and the freezing rain expected to follow.

"They may call some of our streets secondary, but for us those are main streets, because [school buses] pick up our kids in the neighborhoods, not just on main streets," Vasser said. He said conditions were also viewed as dangerous for walkers.

Port Authority buses operated about a half-hour behind regular morning schedules, and certain routes had worse problems, spokesman Bob Grove said. From 8 to 11 a.m., he said, the 11E Fineview couldn't make it up to Perry Hilltop from the lower North Side.

A Beaver Falls woman was killed when her car crashed into a milk truck on icy state Route 68 in New Sewickley shortly before 4 p.m. Betty Jane Welling, 49, was pronounced dead at the scene. A passenger in her car and the truck driver were treated at hospitals. The road was closed for 90 minutes.

Also in Beaver County, a tractor-trailer crashed into a Jersey barrier on the Pennsylvania Turnpike before noon, temporarily forcing westbound motorists to exit at Cranberry and reducing traffic to one lane eastbound.

The local problems resulted from a storm that swept up from the south and caused havoc across the eastern United States, while another storm system moved across the western Plains. The weather was blamed for at least 27 highway deaths.

Schools were closed from Nebraska and Missouri to the Carolinas and northern Georgia. Businesses and government offices were closed in North and South Carolina and in Virginia.

The Washington, D.C., area got up to 7 inches of snow, its heaviest snowfall of the season.

Relentless cold rather than snow was the problem farther north, where Coast Guard cutters have been busy breaking ice in the shipping lanes of Boston Harbor and south of Cape Cod. It is the region's worst ice in about 11 years, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Andrew Shinn.

Today's snowstorm could pummel New York City and southern New England far worse than Western Pennsylvania. AccuWeather.com predicted up to a foot of snow in parts of the Northeast later today and into tomorrow.