While the cold snap blanketing the United States and Canada has ravaged some parts, it has given some people the opportunity to ice-skate and walk on water.

Footage has emerged on YouTube of a man ice-skating next to the frozen ocean at Long Sands Beach in Maine, in the nation's north-east.

Peter Lekousi captured the stunning event on Sunday (local time), after he and his wife took a stroll along the beach.

He took to Facebook to try to identify the skater, writing he was happy the man brought his ice skates to the beach.

"I keep trying to tell you all, every day is a beach day in Maine," he wrote on Facebook.

Meanwhile, the waters hugging the northern Massachusetts coast were frozen enough to carry the weight of several people, metres from the edge of the beach the same day.

Massachusetts resident Ryan Canty captured drone footage of the frozen ocean. (Storyful: Ryan Canty)

Much of the state was hit with record snowfall.

The powerful "bomb cyclone" winter storm, which struck the US east coast from last week, has killed at least 18 people.

About 100 million people across the US also faced a gusty deep freeze on the weekend, with winds of more than 144 kilometres per hour swirling around New Hampshire's Mount Washington, the north-east's highest peak, at a temperature of -38 degree Celsius and a wind chill of -69C.

It tied for second place with Armstrong, Ontario, as the coldest spot in the world.

Frazzled travellers snoozed on floors and dozens of suitcases sat unclaimed as a welter of wintry problems — from a snowstorm to a burst water pipe — extended flight delays at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport into a fourth day.

With a forecast calling for a bit more snow and sleet in the night, scores of flights were still delayed or cancelled earlier in the day as one of the US's busiest airports tried to untangle a knot of trouble that began when a winter storm blasted New York and snarled air travel on Thursday, local time.

As the skies cleared, unusually cold weather shot in, creating what the airport operating agency called a cascade of problems.

Fights were backlogged, gates clogged up, and some arriving passengers waited on the tarmac for hours and ended up being bused to terminals. Other flights were diverted. One plane even clipped another outside a terminal amid the difficult conditions early Saturday.

Temperatures around the airport were in the teens and single digits Saturday and Sunday local time, dropping to -15C, according to the National Weather Service.

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