CHICAGO (REUTERS) - A major winter storm pounding the Midwest has turned deadly.

At least two people have been killed. A man in his 60s died of a heart attack after shovelling snow in Illinois.

And a 33-year-old woman died in a multi-vehicle crash in Michigan.

The storm dumped up to nine inches of snow in Chicago leading to thousands of flight cancellations and delays.

It also wreaked havoc on the roads causing crashes on icy expressways as people struggled to get to work and dig out of a storm system that stretched from Montana to Michigan.

The storm is expected to dump another several inches of snow on the Midwest before heading east towards New England.

New York could get socked with up to a foot of snow as the storm picks up moisture off the Great Lakes.