Storm making travel hazardous; 11 die in crashes
DALLAS – A winter storm blamed for at least 11 fatal accidents in the West and Texas threatens to dampen the Thanksgiving holiday for millions of Americans traveling this week.
Nearly 300 American Airlines and American Eagle flights were canceled in and out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on Monday due to the weather, spokeswoman Laura Masvidal said, mirroring disruptions at the air hub a day earlier. Some of the country’s busiest airports – New York, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston and Charlotte, N.C. – could see big delays.
Icy roads led to hundreds of accidents and at least 11 deaths, half of them in Texas. On Monday, the storm brought a mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain to parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, southern Kansas and Texas. But as the storm continues east, there are fears of heavy rain along the busy Interstate 95 corridor and sleet, freezing rain and snow away from the coast and at higher elevations.
Tom Kines, a meteorologist with AccuWeather, said it will be “primarily a rain event” for the East Coast, with up to 3 inches of rain dousing travelers.
“The further inland you get – especially as you get into that higher terrain – you are going to deal with frozen precipitation,” Kines said. Snow could fall in western Pennsylvania and the interior of New England. Up to 9 inches could blanket northern parts of West Virginia, where the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning from this morning through Wednesday afternoon.
Jeff Smidt is traveling Wednesday from his home in Toronto to visit his family in Andover, Mass., just outside Boston.
“My understanding is that I’m traveling at like the worst time ever,” he said.
Smidt tried to get on an earlier flight but JetBlue told him it isn’t waiving any change fees yet.
Air travel will be busier and more expensive than usual this Thanksgiving.
This holiday will likely see the most air travelers since 2007, according to Airlines for America, the industry’s trade and lobbying group, with the busiest day being Sunday, an estimated 2.56 million passengers. Wednesday is expected to be the second-busiest with 2.42 million passengers.
The average domestic airfare is up 9.5 percent from last Thanksgiving to $313, according to the Airlines Reporting Corp., which processes tickets sold online and by traditional travel agencies.
Meanwhile, Amtrak prices in September – the most recent month for which data is available – were up more than 4 percent from last year.
Adding to the usual stress of holiday travel, though, is the weather that’s ahead for much of the country. Already, the storm system dropped several inches of snow last week in New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and West Texas.
Some of the worst weather was expected in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas, but most of the region saw only sporadic ice and very cold temperatures.
In Texas, up to 44,000 people, mostly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, were without power earlier in the day, but that number had dropped considerably by the afternoon.