Floods

More snow is expected later in the week, followed by colder temperatures.

The heaviest snow fell Sunday and early Monday across a stretch of central Illinois roughly along Interstate 74 from west of Peoria to east of the Bloomington-Normal area. The National Weather Service said 7.5 inches of snow fell around Bloomington, and a number of rural schools were closed Monday.

Icy roads led to fatal accidents just outside Champaign and near Lincoln on Monday, according to police.

Venita Hubbard, 32, of Champaign, died after her car slid into a pickup on an icy road in the city just after 8 a.m., Champaign police said. And a 21-year-old Bloomington woman died when her car slid into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer on U.S. Highway 136 west of Lincoln, Illinois State Police said. They didn't immediately release her name.

State Police handled dozens of accidents across the state Monday, even in southern Illinois, where snowfall was modest — less than 2 inches in most cases.

"At one point we had over two dozen troopers already at crash locations with over 50 additional calls pending," said Illinois State Police Master Trooper Ralph Timmins, who is based in Collinsville.

Snow wasn't as heavy in the Chicago area, where a couple of inches fell, but low visibility and gusty winds caused flight delays Monday at Chicago's two main airports.

Delays at O'Hare International Airport, the nation's second busiest air hub after Atlanta, averaged about 30 minutes, and 50 flights were canceled Monday, Chicago Department of Aviation spokesman Gregg Cunningham said. Those cancelations were in addition to 50 other flights canceled at O'Hare on Sunday as the storm rolled into Chicago.

At Midway International Airport, delays were around 15 minutes and there were no cancelations, Cunningham said.

The season's first winter storm provided the first big test for a new $450 million O'Hare runway and air-traffic tower, which opened on Nov. 20. A federal analysis appeared to show that it helped reduce flight delays, as aviation officials hoped it would. Whenever bad weather reduced visibility, controllers could land just two planes at a time — reducing capacity by a third.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said the 72-flights-per-hour arrival rate for Sunday afternoon and evening "very, very good for the weather we had," but declined to estimate how much worse delays might have been at O'Hare without the new runway.

The National Weather Service forecasts rain turning to snow Wednesday and into Thursday, followed by "much colder air behind that at the end of the week," with lows in the teens and highs ranging from the mid-20s in northern Illinois to the lower 30s in the south, meteorologist Chuck Schaffer said.

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — At least four people were killed and more than 71,000 displaced by floods caused by heavy rains in northern Sri Lanka, officials said Saturday.

Keerthi Ekanayake of the Disaster Management Center said the northern Jaffna peninsula and Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts were inundated and nearly 6,000 houses destroyed by persistent showers over the past few days.

Hundreds of thousands of people had already been displaced by fighting between government troops and Tamil Tiger rebels and were living in temporary huts in the region.

The government plans to send emergency aid and shelter materials, Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said.

Aid agencies were evicted from the rebel-held territory in September by the government, which said it could not guarantee their security amid the fighting.

Brazilian authorities have dispatched police to quell looting in some of the worst-hit areas in southern Brazil, where floods and rain-spawned landslides have left at least 97 people dead.

Police arrested several people in the cities of Blumenau and Itajai, two of the hardest-hit areas, for ransacking grocery stores and supermarkets. Officials say that in some areas, people have not had food or water in at least four days.

Civil defense officials estimate that more than 100,000 people remain cut off after several days of heavy flooding in southern Santa Catarina state.

The Brazilian government has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to emergency relief, including the rebuilding of roads and ports.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva flew over the affected areas Wednesday and called the devastation the "worst environmental calamity" the country has ever faced.

Officials say there still is a risk of more landslides. Local politicians have declared states of emergency, urging people to leave their homes and seek shelter at safer locations.

Helicopters - some provided by the government - have rescued more than 1,000 people.

Flooding also cut natural gas supplies after rupturing a pipeline that runs from Bolivia to Brazil.