Bad weather threatens Thanksgiving travel

COLORADO: Two powerful storms packing heavy snows and strong winds are expected to sweep across the western half of the United States this week just in time to wreak havoc on the plans of millions of Americans traveling for Thursday’s Thanksgiving Day holiday. Heavy snow began falling in Denver on Monday night, with the National Weather Service (NWS) warning motorists of “significant travel delays” from the accumulating snow. Snowfall is expected to increase over the course of the night to about 2 inches per hour, the NWS said.

A storm will dump more than a foot (30 cm) of snow as wind gusts reach 45 mph (72 kph) in an area from southern Wyoming to central Colorado. The same storm will then drop 6 to 12 inches (15.2 to 30.5 cm) of snow as it moves east across Nebraska and Kansas and into Minneapolis before reaching the upper Great Lakes by today, the NWS said. Most school districts in the Denver metro area, along with state government offices, announced that they would be closed.

A second strong storm is expected to dump heavy snow on parts of the Pacific Northwest starting today night, with blizzard-like conditions in Oregon and Northern California, the NWS said. “Everyone say a prayer to the Colorado weather gods that my flight doesn’t get cancelled on Wednesday night,” Evelyn Graham, a 26-year-old biology student at the California State University in San Marcos, said in a Twitter message. “I wanna go home for Thanksgiving.”

Some 55 million travelers will fly or drive at least 50 miles from their homes this Thanksgiving, according to the American Automobile Association. At Denver International Airport, nearly 500 flights scheduled to depart and arrive today have been canceled ahead of the storm, airport spokesman Alex Renteria said.