By The Associated Press

Bitter cold and gusty winds swept across the eastern U.S. on Monday with falling temperatures replacing the weekend’s falling snow.

The National Weather Service had forecast that temperatures would be more than 20 degrees below normal across the Northeast, with wind gusts up to 30 mph and wind chills approaching minus 40 degrees in northern New York and Vermont.

In suburban Chicago, the temperature was about 14 degrees (minus-10 Celsius) Sunday when a 12-year-old girl died after a snow fort collapsed on her. Police in Arlington Heights, Illinois, said Esther Jung had been playing with another girl outside Rothem Church. Their families began looking for them about an hour later and found them under the snow. The younger girl survived.

In Connecticut, more than 12,000 homes and businesses remained without power Monday morning, down from a high of more than 25,000 outages Sunday, as temperatures dropped below zero in some locations. The power restoration effort following the weekend storm turned deadly Sunday when an Eversource subcontractor was struck by falling tree in Middletown while working on a power line.

In Kansas, a snowplow driver was killed when the plow drove onto the shoulder of a road and rolled over, throwing him under the vehicle. It wasn’t clear why the driver had moved to the shoulder from the roadway.

The bitter cold is expected to stymie travel once again with FlightAware reporting nearly 280 flights canceled as of Monday morning.

Another storm system is already developing over the Rockies that could blanket the same region with more snow by the end of the week.