The east coast of the US was hit by a blanket of blizzards on Thursday, with even Florida seeing snow fall and more than a foot blanketing parts of New England.

Already least 16 people are known to have died due to the cold - six in Wisconsin, four in Texas, three in North Carolina, one in South Carolina, one in North Dakota and one in Missouri.

The snowstorms left more than 13 million people subject to blizzard warnings from Virginia in the mid-Atlantic to Maine in the far northeast.

More than 5,000 flights have been cancelled, schools were shut in New York City, trains were not running in the Boston area and offices closed throughout the region as the east coast battened down the hatches.

Boston on Thursday saw the worst flooding since 1978.