At least 48 people have died in the weekend blizzard which ripped through the midwest and eastern United States. Most of the victims were killed in traffic accidents. The storm closed hub airports in the mid-west, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers nationwide as airlines struggled to resume flights on one of the busiest weekends of the year.
It may be Thursday before all the travellers stranded in Chicago, St Louis, and cities which feed air traffic into them are able to reach their destinations. At Detroit, the sun was shining and aircraft were yesterday flying out thousands of people who had been stuck there for up to two days.
Chicago was still digging out from nearly 2 ft of snow which gusts of 60 m.p.h. off Lake Michigan had whipped into 5 ft drifts. It was Chicago's heaviest snowfall since 23 in fell in 1967.
Victims of the blizzards include at least one person who died of a heart attack while shovelling snow and another who died in a sledding accident in Iowa.
Four people died near Lexington, Virginia, in a highway accident involving eight tractor-trailer rigs and seven cars. In Minnesota, sub-zero temperatures may have contributed to the deaths on Friday of three adults and three children in a house fire in Ceylon. A 60-car pile-up caused by icy roads was reported in the New York City area of Queens early on Sunday. Some 23 people were injured. Earlier in New Jersey, 30 people were injured in a 23-vehicle pile-up near Hackensack. The storm was so severe that meteorologists in Wisconsin, are calling it the worst in 50 years.