"It's a strong low pressure system -- the pressure's as low as you'd get with a category two type hurricane -- but it is starting to weaken slowly," explained Michael Wyllie, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

"It's caused a lot of problems for people in the metropolitan region as well as most of the country and it's left an incredible amount of water behind, especially in New York and northeast New Jersey," he said.

"If the temperatures were lower, we would have had an incredible amount of snow... I don't want to estimate how much snow that would have been," he said.

Connecticut authorities reported high winds and downed trees in several areas, while New Jersey called a state of emergency and advised people not to travel unless necessary.

First Lady Laura Bush was forced to cancel a day trip to Connecticut due to the hazardous weather.

In Massachusetts, the Boston marathon kicked off as planned, despite pouring rain and wind gusts of up to 80 kilometers per hour (50 miles per hour), organizers said, describing the conditions as "dreadful."

Flood warnings were in place along a broad swathe of the east coast, from Maine in the north down to Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service said.

Two dead in northern India heat wave
New Delhi (AFP) April 17 - Two men died of sunstroke in northern India on Monday as an early summer heat wave intensified across the region, officials said.

The two men collapsed in the northern city of Bhatinda, where temperatures soared to nearly 41 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit), they said.

The 15 million residents of the capital New Delhi sweltered in 40-degree temperatures, city officials said, with meteorologists predicting that the mercury could rise by another four degrees in the coming days.

Prolonged power cuts compounded the misery, officials said.

In the northern desert state of Rajasthan, temperatures in Sriganganagar reached 44.5 degrees Celsius, the weather office said.

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