BBC Online :
A huge winter storm is affecting the densely populated US north-east, after wreaking havoc in the South.
Across the typically mild South, more than half a million homes and businesses lack power, and thousands of flights have been cancelled.
The mammoth storm has affected people in about 22 states from Texas to Maine and caused at least 12 deaths.
The most crowded swathe of the US – between Washington DC and Boston – is braced for up to 8in (20cm) of snow.
A band stretching from North-eastern Pennsylvania through New York State’s Hudson Valley and into New England could see 10-20in of snow on Thursday, the National Weather Service warned.
Airlines grounded more than 3,300 flights on Wednesday and have already cancelled at least 3,700 flights for Thursday, including more than half of those between New York and Washington, according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.
The storm, described by the National Weather Service as an event of “historical proportions”, leaves in its southern wake a wreckage of snapped tree limbs and power lines coated in as much as an inch of ice, motorways turned to car parks, road accidents, and residents shivering in darkened homes.
Forecasters said it was one of the worst storms to strike Atlanta, the largest city in the South, since 1973.
President Barack Obama offered the might of the US federal government in aid, declaring a disaster in the state of South Carolina and all northern counties in Georgia.
On Wednesday evening, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) said it was moving supplies, including generators, meals, water, blankets and cots to an emergency centre in Atlanta.
At least 12 deaths have already been blamed on the storm, including three people killed when an ambulance slid off an icy Texas road and caught fire and a man in Georgia who slipped and fell on a patch of ice.
Thousands of vehicles have been backed up on snow-covered motorways around Raleigh, North Carolina, with some people abandoning their vehicles.
