The weather forecasters were correct this time around. The winter storm that is moving eastward from the Central Plains across a wide swath of the United States is snarling travel, leaving tens of thousands of travelers stranded at airports and train terminals while the luckier ones are merely stuck at home.
The combination of snow, ice, wind, and plunging temperatures stirred dangerous travel conditions.
The National Weather Service issued winter storm warnings for Kansas and Missouri, where blizzard conditions brought wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 km/h). The warnings were extended to include New Jersey on Monday.
“For locations in this region that receive the highest snow totals, it may be the heaviest snowfall in at least a decade,” the weather service said.
The unusually cold weather is due to a polar vortex of ultra-cold air, which usually remains penned up around the North Pole. When the air escapes, it can create the intense cold reported across the Central Plains and Midwest in recent days.
On Monday as of 12:30 p.m. EST, airlines had postponed or cancelled tens of thousands of flights in the period starting from Friday. Over 3,738 flights wihtin, into, and out of the United States had been delayed while an additional 1,777 were cancelled, according to FlightAware, which tracks such information. Those figures were similar on Sunday, when 9,304 flights had been delayed and an additional 1,812 were cancelled, and on Saturday, when those figures were 8,470 and 323.
The airports seeing the greatest impact from the snow and ice storm include Ronald Reagan Washington National and Dulles International, followed by Baltimore/Washington International, St. Louis Lamberg International, and Chicago O’Hare International airports.
Southwest Airlines on Monday led the nation in flight cancellations, with 681, representing 18% of ist scheduled operations, while American Airlines reported 571 cancellations and United Airlines 461.
Amtrak, the nation’s rail passenger service operator, canceled a number of trains along in the Northeast Corridor, which covers East Coast and Mid-Adlantic states, saying it was “for the safety of Amtrak customers and employees, due to forecasted winter weather.” This included several Acela service trains from Washington, D.C. to Boston and a number of Northeast Regional trains from Washington, D.C. to Norfolk and Newport News.
Highway travel has also been affected by the storm. Over the weekend, some 600 motorists were stranded in Missouri, local authorities said. The storm caused hundreds of car accidents in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky.
The storm has left over 300,000 customers without electricity in Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, and Missouri, according to Poweroutage.us, which tracks such information.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
