Icy storm on travelers’ Thanksgiving menu
DENVER — Heavy snow and wind shut down highways Tuesday in Colorado and Wyoming, prompted school closures in Nebraska and forced more than 1,000 travelers to sleep overnight in Denver’s airport after hundreds of flights were canceled just as the intense Thanksgiving week travel period went into high gear.
That storm headed next to South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and another storm in the Pacific Ocean was closing in on California, Oregon and Nevada — making for a double whammy of early wintry weather.
And in northern California and southern Oregon, residents were bracing for the late Tuesday afternoon arrival of a “bomb cyclone” weather phenomenon that could create waves of up to 35 feet, wind gusts of up to 75 mph and heavy snow in mountainous areas.
Southwest Airlines canceled about 200 flights in Denver, and airline spokesman Brad Hawkins said it would take “a couple of days“to accommodate stranded passengers on other flights because there are few during the preThanksgiving travel crush. That makes it hard for airlines to rebook passengers whose flights have been canceled.
Blizzard and wintry weather warnings extended into the Great Lakes states with the storm expected to bring high winds and snow to Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin later Tuesday and a chance of snow over the weekend for parts of New England, said Alex Lamers, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“That could be a coastto-coast storm,” he said.
The storm system could mean disappointment for fans of the larger-than-life balloons flown at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York.
Organizers were preparing for the possibility that of grounding the iconic balloon characters because of 40 to 50 mph gusts in the forecast. Rules put in place after several people were injured by a balloon years ago require lower altitudes or full removal if sustained winds exceed 23 mph and gusts exceed 34 mph. The decision will be made on parade day.
The second storm developing in the Pacific Ocean was expected to slam the West Coast on Tuesday evening, bringing snow to the mountains of California and Nevada and wind and rain along the coasts of California and Oregon.
Forecasters warned of “difficult to impossible travel conditions” across much of northern Arizona later this week as that storm dumps about 2 feet of snow.
The approaching storm accelerated the annual winter closure of the highway leading to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon by five days.
This month, AAA predicted that the number of travelers over a five-day stretch Thanksgiving holiday travel period starting Wednesday will be the second-highest ever, behind only 2005.
For those flying, airlines expect traffic to be up about 4 percent from this time last year. Airlines added about 850 flights and 108,000 seats per day on average to handle the increase over last year’s crowds, according to the trade group Airlines for America.