Thousands of flights cancelled in eastern US as winter storm heads north

Thousands of US flights were cancelled on Monday and more than 100,000 homes and businesses lacked power as a snowstorm crept up the east Coast to New England and Canada, where it could drop more than another 30cm of snow, forecasters said.

More than 2,200 flights were cancelled or delayed Monday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, and more than 128,000 homes and business were still without power from Georgia to Maine, according to PowerOutageUS.

On Sunday, there were more than 3,000 flights cancelled in the US.

The storm could drop another 20cm-30cm of snow in parts of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine on Monday, as it heads north to Quebec and Ontario, said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park Maryland.

Atlanta recorded its first snow in four years, the weather service said.

Officials in the eastern US urged motorists to stay off snowy roads on Monday, the holiday honouring slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.

In North Carolina, where some regions saw record snowfalls, two people died Sunday when they lost control of their car in Raleigh, media reports said.

Traffic in Toronto, Canada's largest city, and other cities of Ontario was snarled as storms dumped several centimetres of snow and brought visibility to near zero.

An extreme weather warning is in effect for much of southeastern Canada, according to Environment Canada, and Toronto is forecast to receive as much as60 cm of snow.

More than a third of flights were cancelled at Toronto Pearson airport, Canada's busiest, and some people were stuck in their vehicles, waiting for roads to be cleared. Buses were at a standstill and passing pedestrians were helping push cars up a street at a main commuter route in central Toronto, which appeared to not have been ploughed.

“This storm is far from over,” Chenard said. “We have winter storm warnings across New England, New York, and western Ohio and Pennsylvania. There are high-wind warnings across coastal New England from Massachusetts to Maine with gusts up to 104km/h.”