Wintry Storm Delaying U.S. Air Travel Moves Northeast

A wintry storm that grounded hundreds of flights across the U.S. South will combine with another system to bring rain and gusty winds to the Northeast in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush.

Heavy rain will reach the East Coast starting tomorrow, with snow forecast for the Appalachians, said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services in Nashua, New Hampshire.

“The I-95 corridor is going to see a lot of rain and a lot of wind and that will be true from the mid-Atlantic states all the way up to Boston and Portland,” Carolan said. “This is not going to be a snowstorm for the megalopolis.”

The storm triggered winter weather advisories from New Mexico to Arkansas and parts of Mississippi, the National Weather Service said. At least 10 people were killed over the weekend as the system moved across Texas and the South, according to the Associated Press.

As of 3:35 p.m. New York time, 398 flights into and around the U.S. were canceled, with 315 of them originating or departing from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to FlightAware, a Houston-based tracking company. About 43 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home during the holiday period from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1, AAA said last week in its annual outlook.
Travel Trouble

The Southern storm will merge with another from Canada and the Great Lakes as it moves east, according to Carolan. With heavy rains into the middle of the week, travel problems will spread as well, said Tom Kines, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania.

“There’s no doubt there are going to be travel delays at least as far as airplanes are concerned,” Kines said by telephone.

Carolan said snow will fall mainly in the upper elevations along the Appalachian Mountains northward through western New York and northern New England.

A winter storm watch is in place from eastern Ohio to northern Vermont, according to the weather service. A winter weather and freezing rain advisories were posted from Georgia to Virginia.

Heavy snow is possible in the mountains of West Virginia and Virginia through tomorrow, according to the U.S. Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. Northern Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine may also receive deep snow by Nov. 28.

Temperatures throughout the eastern U.S. are expected to be 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 to 4.4 Celsius) below normal through the end of the week, according MDA Weather Services in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

For the Nov. 28 Thanksgiving holiday in New York, the high is forecast to be 35 and the low 26 under mainly clear skies, the National Weather Service said.