By Chantal Da Silva -
NBC News
Some 200,000 people were without power in the eastern United States Monday morning after a major winter storm swept through the region, spawning multiple tornadoes in Florida.
The storm, which brought snow to the northern Plains and Upper Midwest over the weekend, appeared to cause thousands of flights to be canceled between Sunday and Monday.
In North Carolina, it also appeared to play a role in the deaths of two people Sunday after a vehicle veered off Interstate 95 before hitting several trees in a median.
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Nearly 700 miles to the north in southwestern Florida, multiple tornadoes have been blamed for destroying more than two dozen homes and damaging others in Lee County on the Gulf Coast, while thousands of homes were they were without electricity.
According to the National Weather Service in Miami, there were "multiple tornadoes" in Southwest Florida on Sunday morning.
Our sister network NBC News has contacted the weather service for more information.
At a news conference that day, Cecil Pendergrass, co-chairman of the board of county commissioners, said four people were injured and more than 60 homes had been made “uninhabitable” by the tornadoes, according to The Miami Herald.
Pendergrass said the EF2 tornado had also left about 7,000 homes without power.
As of early Monday morning, just under 1,150 Florida homes appeared to be without power, according to the PowerOutage.us website.
Meanwhile, more than 187,000 customers in other eastern US states had also lost power as of early Monday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Tens of thousands of homes in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York were affected, with more than 60,000 customers without power in the Carolinas alone.
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The storm also forced the cancellation of thousands of flights between Sunday and Monday, and American Airlines said on its website that some customers affected by the storm could rebook flights without paying.
On Sunday, more than 3,000 flights into, out of and within the US were canceled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.
As of Monday morning, more than 1,200 flights had been cancelled.
The storm system wreaked more havoc on roadways, with two people killed in a crash in Nash County, North Carolina, NBC affiliate WRAL-TV reported.
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The North Carolina State Highway Patrol said the incident unfolded just before 7:30 a.m. Sunday, with a driver traveling southbound on Interstate 95 veering off the road and hitting several trees. in a median, the station reported.
Both the driver and a passenger were pronounced dead at the scene, stating that speeding for the condition of the vehicle is believed to have been a factor in the crash.
In Durham, North Carolina, a dramatic scene also unfolded on Sunday, with footage showing a tractor-trailer dangling from a bridge after skidding down North Carolina Highway 147.
The driver of the vehicle was taken to the hospital but is expected to be fine, WRAL-TV reported.
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Marty Homan of the North Carolina Department of Transportation said structural engineers would need to assess the bridge before reopening it, the station reported.
The North Carolina State Highway Patrol did not immediately respond to a request for more information.
The incidents came as Governor Roy Cooper warned drivers in the state to "stay put."
"The best way to avoid a car accident or being stranded is to stay put," Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement Sunday.
“Less people on the road means fewer car accidents, plus it allows road crews and utility workers to get faster results,” he said.
By early Monday, the storm system had reached the northeast and is expected to move into southeastern Canada by Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
The weather service said the system was expected to produce heavy snow over parts of the lower Great Lakes, central Appalachia and the Northeast on Monday, with rain also expected over coastal and inland portions of the south/north. from New England.
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By Tuesday morning, "scattered areas of light snow" are expected over parts of the Central Appalachians, spreading to higher elevations in the Northeast.
The weather service warned that "heavy snow" was also expected in parts of the Upper Mississippi Valley, near Lake Superior and on Michigan's Upper Peninsula between Tuesday and Wednesday.