Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Snow and Wind: A Bad Day Ahead for Air Travel

I'm in the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona and the other night a hellacious windstorm roared through, the front of some very bad weather in a very big hurry to get somewhere else.

Which it obviously has done. In Chicago today, they're expecting wind gusts of 25 miles an hour, and up to 35 mph tonight, along with rain, snow and ice. Same thing tomorrow.

Those little red dots are popping up on the FlightStats.com airport map. Flights are being canceled. At O'Hare at 9 a.m. Central, more than 200 flights had already been scrubbed (out of a total 2300 scheduled arrivals and departures). At Minneapolis, about 100 cancellations were already on the board. Milwaukee and Toronto were also reporting big delays and mounting cancellations. At the same time, high winds are affecting operations at Newark and LaGuardia.

Given the ripple effect and the dire weather forecast, especially for the Midwest, this shapes up as a real good day to find a way to stay out of the airports.

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