PORTLAND – People stocked up on last-minute supplies including snow shovels and salt before hunkering down Monday for a nor’easter that threatened to dump up to 3 feet of snow on parts of Maine.

A winter storm warning was posted for much of western and coastal Maine for a slow-moving storm with heavy snow for 24 to 36 hours.

Businesses and schools closed early on Monday. The state’s major airports warned of delays and cancellations. And the Maine Emergency Management Agency was staffed for the first snowstorm since March 1993.

Faced with dire predictions, the Legislature canceled committee sessions today and the Portland Pirates did something they’ve never done before: The minor league hockey team postponed today’s game.

Before the storm’s full force arrived, people made their way to stores to stock up on videotapes, food and, of course, snow shovels.

Why would anyone still need a snow shovel in March, after Portland already received nearly 5 feet of snow before the nor’easter?

“We lost our shovel. It got buried in the snow,” Linda Jacobs of Cape Elizabeth explained Monday as she put her newly purchased shovel in her vehicle outside the Maine Hardware Store in Portland.

The Portland International Jetport was eerily quiet as the snow began falling Monday morning. Some flights were making it out but all service to northeastern cities showed up as “canceled” on the overhead monitors.

A Canadian family was dropping someone off at the airport for a flight to Indianapolis before driving to Corning, N.Y.

“We’re dropping our daughter off, and we’re driving into it. God help us,” said Janet Ingersoll of Saint John, New Brunswick, whose daughter caught one of the last two Delta Air Lines flights out of Portland.

The center of the storm is expected to sit off the coast of Cape Cod and pump snow before backtracking, then eventually moving offshore.

The heaviest snow was expected to fall Monday night into Tuesday, accompanied by strong onshore winds that could trigger coastal flooding and beach erosion, forecasters said.

“It’s large. It’s really large,” Butch Roberts, a weather service meteorologist in Gray, said Monday. “We’re going to see an increase in northeasterly winds, and that’s going to produce some pretty horrific conditions – blizzard-type conditions – tonight, and that’s when the snow gets really geared up.”

Coastal regions were expected to get 12 to 18 inches of snow, and the biggest snow tallies were expected in inland regions, said Tom Hawley, another weather service meteorologist.