Hundreds of thousands of people remain without electrical power after weekend storms ravaged parts of the southeast and Midwest United States, causing 11 deaths, overturning cars, uprooting trees and reducing buildings to rubble.

The PowerOutage.US website, which tracks outages, reported over 100,000 outages across the country on Sunday afternoon, with 40,000 in New York alone. More than 28,000 were without electricity in South and North Carolina on Sunday morning.

Nearly 1,000 flights were cancelled at Chicago’s two main airports over the weekend, as the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory, flood watch and lakeshore flood warning for the metropolitan area.

The weather service also said a tornado packing winds of at least 134 mph (215 kph) hit Alabama's Pickens County on Saturday, killing three people. The state's governor Kay Ivey praised first responders in a statement expressing grief over the loss of life.

"This morning, I have reached out to both the county leadership as well as the legislative delegation to offer my deepest condolences in this terrible loss of life,” she said.

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In northwestern Louisiana, three deaths were blamed on high winds. A man was crushed to death in his bed in Oil City by a tree that fell on his home early Saturday. A couple in nearby Bossier Parish were also killed when the storms demolished their mobile home.

The National Weather Service said a tornado with 135 mph winds had hit the area during the weekend.

High winds and icy weather were factors in power outages affecting tens of thousands of people in the south and the northeast US.

Icy road conditions were blamed for Saturday deaths in Lubbock, Texas, where two first responders were killed when they were hit by a vehicle at the scene of a traffic accident.

Entergy Corporation said its subsidiaries serving Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi had more than 30,000 customers without power on Sunday morning, most in Mississippi and Arkansas.

That was down from a peak of 134,000 outages in the entire Entergy system. While most were expected to be restored later in the day, some in areas of Arkansas and Mississippi with extensive damage might take longer, according to spokeswoman Lee Sabatini.

She said the two states had suffered "extensive infrastructure damage".

On Sunday afternoon, the National Weather Service said winter storms were expected to move towards the Pacific Northwest and bring heavy snow and freezing rain towards northern New England.

"Winter driving can be hazardous", the weather service warned in a tweet, adding: "Remember, 'Ice and snow, take it slow."