A man walks on a street during a snowy day in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Nov. 28, 2021.Photo:Xinhua

A major winter storm blanketed a swathe of North America in snow Monday as it sliced up the US east coast into Canada, disrupting travel and cutting power to thousands of homes.

Many Americans who had been without electricity, about 120,000 of them Monday afternoon, seemed to be back online by the evening, according to the website poweroutage.us. 

The biggest concentration of outages came in the mid-Atlantic state of West Virginia and the southeastern states of North and South Carolina and Georgia.

More than 1,700 flights within, into or out of the US were canceled by Monday evening, in addition to the 3,000 the day before, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.

Large parts of the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario remained under winter storm or blizzard warnings, said a Canadian government website.

In Toronto, up to two feet (60 centimeters) of snow was expected, "a historic storm for the city," tweeted Anthony Farnell, chief meteorologist of Canadian TV channel Global News.

"The @cityoftoronto has declared a major snow storm condition in response to today's heavy and disruptive snowfall which will help support our city-wide snow removal operations," Toronto Mayor John Tory tweeted Monday, and triggering a rule that prevents cars from parking in certain areas while the powder is cleared.

Many schools were closed and school buses were not operating in Quebec and the south of Ontario, including the Toronto area. 

Students had been due to return to classrooms on Monday in both provinces after the holiday break.

Monday was a national holiday in the US, so most schools and businesses were already closed, though many people usually take the opportunity to travel during the long weekend.

The US National Weather Service said it expected the storm to "slowly wind down today," but that snow would continue to fall through the evening in upper New York and New England. 

The heaviest snowfall was recorded in Ashtabula, Ohio, the agency said. 

"Significant impacts due to snow, ice, wind, and coastal flooding will persist across a large area." 

The storm spawned damaging tornadoes in Florida, while in the Carolinas and up through the Appalachian mountain region.

Powerful winds downed trees and caused coastal flooding, with a 12-foot storm surge reported in Boston.

According to scientists, climate change could be an aggravating factor for extreme weather events like snowstorms, as well as deadly floods, typhoons and heat waves.

Transport was also seriously disrupted, with drivers warned of hazardous road conditions from the southern US state of Arkansas to Quebec, Canada.

"We're seeing a number of cars having to stop and de-ice their windshield," the Quebec transportation ministry tweeted Monday morning.

AFP