Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing yesterday sent a message of condolences to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over casualties and loses caused by a fierce snowstorm that struck the Midwestern US states last week.

The storm, the first big one of the season in the Midwest, has been blamed for at least 13 deaths as it hit a swath from Texas to Michigan and then blew through the Northeast late Friday and early Saturday.

Schools and businesses were temporarily closed and hundreds of airline passengers had been stranded by cancelled flights.

Thousands of homes and businesses had no electricity for heat and lights on Saturday after the storm.

As temperatures plummeted below freezing on Saturday, officials said some people could be without power for days. National Guardsmen in Missouri and Illinois went door to door in the St. Louis area to make sure residents were surviving the cold.

Nearly 600 Amtrak passengers in Illinois and Missouri were delayed up to 10 hours on Friday and Saturday morning, Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari said. With many tracks still strewn with downed trees and power lines, passengers were eventually taken by bus to their destinations.

Trees were blown onto homes and cars, and a big Christmas tree in front of the New Hampshire Statehouse was toppled.

Many areas of Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri got more than 30 centimetres of snow, including 40 centimetres in parts of central Missouri and 43 centimetres at Manistee, Michigan.

Airlines were recovering from the widespread cancellations caused by the storm; delays at Lambert Airport in St. Louis were generally 15 minutes or less on Saturday, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. There were no measurable delays Saturday at Chicago's two major airports, said Wendy Abrams, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Aviation.

Highways were mostly clear but still had icy spots. "Nobody really should travel unless you absolutely have to get out," Missouri Governor Matt Blunt said.

Two women were killed in Pennsylvania, one by a falling tree and another by a wind-blown section of roof, and another falling tree landed on a house and killed one person in New York, authorities said. Two men over the age of 60 died after shovelling snow in Wisconsin, and an 87-year-old woman died in the St. Louis areas in a house fire that started when an ice-laden tree limb fell on a power line, fire officials said.

Storm-related traffic deaths included two in Missouri, one in Kansas and one in Oklahoma. Near Paducah, Texas, a vehicle carrying high school girls' basketball players overturned on an icy highway, killing a 14-year-old player and injuring seven other people.

Source: China Daily