Potential Air Travel Nightmare Later Today

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UPDATE II: 9:16AM CDT:  O'Hare has been put on a delay program by the FAA. Average delays, for the time being, will be 23 minutes. However, I expect those to grow significantly this afternoon.

UPDATE: 9:05AM CDT. Within ten minutes of posting this, the FAA has posted major delays at LaGuardia and Newark due to developing thunderstorms.


ORIGINAL POST:

If you are planning to travel by air, please read this. No, better yet, get to the airport to see if you can get an earlier flight and/or avoid the hubs I'm going to outline below.

First, San Francisco (hub to United and Virgin America) already has a "ground stop" for flights arriving from the central and western U.S. due to low clouds and fog. That might be the first domino tipping over.

Below is current AccuWeather regional radar. It shows thunderstorms near the hubs at Minneapolis and Detroit. They may be next.



Below is the NWS Storm Prediction Center's forecast of severe thunderstorms (large hail, damaging thunderstorm winds) valid from now until early tomorrow morning. The 15% area (yellow) is the significant threshold. Red is relatively high which includes the NYC airports, Boston, Hartford and Philadelphia.
Included in the significant threat area are the Chicago airports, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Milwaukee, the D.C. airports and the Delta hub at Cincinnati. Getting the picture? Now, add the 40% of non-severe thunderstorms in Atlanta and you have the ingredients for airline gridlock.

So, if you can take an earlier flight, do so. If you can be proactively rerouted around these hubs, do so.

For more tips, here is my airline survival guide.

Good luck!!


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