A major snowstorm tore through eastern Canada and northeastern US on Sunday, killing at least one person, making driving conditions treacherous and forcing airports to cancel numerous flights.
Southern Ontario and Quebec provinces took the brunt of the bad weather, with Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal struggling under 40cm of snow, as the storm continued unabated late on Sunday.
Environment Canada warned that "a crippling major winter storm with heavy snow and blowing snow as well as some ice pellets is moving in ... dangerous winter weather conditions are imminent or occurring" in the affected regions.
It told the public to expect delays and disruptions in air and rail services, as the storm tracked northward toward New Brunswick.
In Toronto, the snowstorm caused some 600 traffic accidents on Sunday morning alone, the provincial police reported, while a woman was killed by a snowplow on a roadside in London, Ontario.
Around 100 flights were cancelled at Toronto-Pearson and Montreal-Trudeau airports.
"It's a big one, a dangerous one," Environment Canada climatologist Dave Phillips told CTV Newsnet on Sunday.
"Just because you have this one storm doesn't mean we're into the winter from hell, but my gosh, it's certainly started that way," he said.
The same winter storm front also hammered the Great Lakes and northeastern regions of the US, with winter storm warnings extending from Michigan and Indiana to Maine, the US Weather Channel reported.
Around 30cm of snow had fallen on parts of the Chicago area and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 25.4cm in Vermont. Meteorologists said that 45.7cm was possible in northern New England and that there was a chance of 35.6cm in parts of Michigan.
"Our biggest advice right now is, stay home," Maine State Police Sergeant Andrew Donovan said.
Visibility in the blowing snow was less than 183m, and in stronger gusts "if there's a car in front of you, you can't even see it," he said.
The storm canceled hundreds of flights at Chicago airports, but the storm did not keep fans away from the New England Patriots-New York Jets game at Foxborough, Massachusetts, even though they had to shovel off their seats in the stadium.
A video of a fire roaring in a fireplace was shown on the scoreboards at both ends of the field.
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