ALERT: 1,000-plus Flights Cancelled Due to Winter Storm (January 17, 2018)

January 17, 2018

All,

More than 1,000 U.S. flights have been canceled and many others delayed today, with airports in Atlanta, Houston, Boston and New Orleans tallying the most cancellations. The governors of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina have declared a state of emergency for at least portions of their states. Some airlines have issued waivers, including

• • • Delta Airlines

• • United Air Lines
• • American Airlines.

 

According to Accuweather:

A storm will form along a new push of frigid air and deposit snow on much of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia into Wednesday evening.

“The snowfall will be parented by a storm responsible for spreading accumulating snow and slippery travel over the Midwest on Monday and the Appalachians on Tuesday,” according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski.

Enough snow will fall to coat roads and lead to airline delays in the region. Plunging temperatures in the storm’s wake will lead to icy surfaces.

According to the CNN:

A winter storm was dumping snow Wednesday morning from the Florida Panhandle to Maine as it left bone-chilling and icy conditions in the states behind it, snarled traffic across parts of the South and East, and forced thousands of airline customers to scramble.

More than 1,000 US flights have been canceled and many others delayed Wednesday, with airports in Atlanta, Houston, Boston and New Orleans tallying the most cancellations, flight tracking site Flightaware.com says.

In Houston, ice that the storm left on roads a day earlier reverberated Wednesday as dozens of semitrailers and cars were stuck on US 59/Interstate 69 for hours and the city’s schools were closed.

Houston-area officials urged people to stay off the roads. Nearly 600 crashes have been reported in Harris County since Tuesday morning, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said.

Snowfall on Wednesday is expected to be the heaviest in North Carolina — Raleigh could get up to 6 inches — and in New England, where Boston also could see around 6 inches.

“As you go into the afternoon, evening hours, the system is pushing off the Eastern Seaboard,” CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri said.

But even where accumulation is lighter, it could lead to slippery travel given the recent stretch of low temperatures, the National Weather Service said on Twitter.

In Tennessee, which had the coldest pockets in the South, wind chills made the air feel as low as 10 below zero Wednesday morning. More than 45 million people are under wind chill advisories or warnings in the United States.

Forecasters said chilly air would hang around from the South to the Northeast, leaving icy roads and hazardous conditions through Thursday.

The governors of Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and North Carolina have declared a state of emergency for at least portions of their states.

Classes were canceled at a number of universities Wednesday in the South, including Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University.

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