NEW YORK: The US northeast was battered by heavy snow and strong winds on Thursday as a mighty storm carved a violent arc across several states, killing more than a dozen people and snarling holiday travel.    

More than 3,000 flights have been cancelled since Christmas Day including 746 on Thursday, as the storm wreaked havoc from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes before heading northeast, according to tracker FlightAware.   

In Canada, dozens of planes were grounded in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal due to the wintry weather, with 22cm of snow expected in the southern part  of Quebec province.  

A new storm was already looming, forecast to hit portions of New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the Ohio valley in the last weekend of 2012, according to forecasters at Accuweather.com.    

The storm was predicted to bring more snow, including to regions that only got rain in the first onslaught, the forecasters said.   

Agence France-Presse