A blizzard with hurricane-force winds brought much of the US East Coast to a standstill today, dumping as much as three feet of snow, stranding tens of thousands of travellers and shutting down Washington and New York City.

A road trip by a college women’s lacrosse team turned to horror when their bus crashed into a tree, killing their pregnant coach, her unborn child, and the driver.

Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania were ordered to evacuate their homes because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people across the US North-East.