Weather System Threatens to Disrupt Thanksgiving Travel

If you’re getting on an airplane to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday today or Sunday, November 20 and 21, good for you.

If you’re flying after that, you could be running into weather issues that are threatening to disrupt holiday travel this week.

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A good-sized storm system moving from west to east is forecasted to bring high winds, rain and perhaps even some snow to some of the biggest airports and population centers in the Midwest and Northeast.

With the amount of people anticipated to fly to kick off the holiday season – the Transportation Security Administration believes it could be as many as 20 million taking to the air – it could get chaotic.

It’s not so much the precipitation as it is the wind, which CNN described as one of two main causes of delays in the winter along with low cloud cover.

CNN did a day-by-day breakdown of what fliers might run into this week.

TODAY AND SUNDAY – Today is the best day of the week to travel as the storm is still in the western states such as Montana and Wyoming. Sunday, the storm begins to pick up as it moves to the Midwest. “Current indications suggest wind gusts could peak in the 35 to 40 mph range,” according to the Chicago National Weather Service.

MONDAY – The front continues to move from west to east and it’s big, stretching north from Maine and south to Florida. It will bring rain, although forecasts for how much vary. “Moderate to heavy rainfall should continue into parts of New England though with the heaviest totals (in excess of an inch) across far northeast Maine on Monday,” CNN quoted the Weather Prediction Center as saying.

TUESDAY – This is when the major east coast airports in New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Boston could be affected. According to the New York National Weather Service, winds could be up to 25 miles per hour and gusts could be 35. “In fact, Tuesday highs will most likely be in the 40s (20s in mountains) for most areas with lows in the 20s for most areas,” the NWS in Washington, D.C. said.

WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY – The rain and wind might still longer in the Northeast on Wednesday. Thanksgiving Day will bring moderate to heavy rain in the South and Southwest. Another storm in the Midwest will again push east that could bring wind, rain and possibly snow by the weekend.