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An ambulance is stuck in the snow in Toronto
Photo: COLE BURSTON / AFP
A heavy snowstorm continued to wreak havoc in much of the eastern United States on Monday.
Southeast Canada was also affected by the storm.
By Monday evening (local time), many of the 215,000 households that had been affected by power outages were back online.
The states of West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia were hardest hit by the power outages.
Almost 1,700 flights at US airports were canceled by the evening, according to the FlightAware website.
The day before, 3,000 flights had already been canceled due to the snow chaos.
A snowstorm warning has been issued for some areas of Canada, including parts of the provinces of Quebec and Ontario.
Many schools remained closed in Quebec and southern Ontario.
Up to 60 centimeters of snow were expected in Ontario's capital Toronto.
In the US, the National Weather Service NWS expected the "heavy snowstorm" to weaken over the course of the day.
Nevertheless, "significant effects from snow, ice, wind and flooding on the coast" can be expected.
Strong winds knocked down trees in many places.
A storm surge around four meters high was reported in the city of Boston.
A storm warning was still in effect for seven states.
The winter storm first hit the southeast and coastal areas in the east of the country on Sunday before moving on to New England and southern Canada.
Accustomed to mild winter weather, Florida also struggled with snow-bringing tornadoes that caused property damage and coastal flooding on Sunday, according to the Weather Channel.
Around 3,000 flights were canceled over the weekend, according to the Flightaware website, and another 4,200 were delayed.
Chaos also reigned on the streets.
A section of Interstate I95 in North Carolina has been closed.
Motorists were warned of "dangerous road conditions" and long traffic jams from Arkansas in the south to Maine in the northeast.
In Virginia alone, police reported nearly a thousand accidents on Sunday.
In the meantime, more than 80 million people have been affected by the weather warnings.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper urged residents to stay at home because of the inclement weather and to avoid driving if possible.
The roof of a college dorm collapsed in Brevard, North Carolina, but no one was injured, according to television reports.
The north-east of the USA had already been snowed in with a blanket of snow up to 30 centimeters thick at the beginning of January.
Hundreds of drivers were stuck for almost 20 hours on one of the most important routes to the capital Washington.
kha/AFP
