Brutal winter storm creates continuing chaos for passengers, holiday packages
CNN
By Danielle Wiener-Bronner and Rebekah Riess, CNN
Flight delays continued Saturday, interrupting travel during the busy holiday season as parts of the country were battered by a deadly winter storm.
As of Saturday morning, there were upwards of 1,800 cancellations of flights into, leaving and within the United States, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Over 3,300 flights were delayed.
Chicago’s O’Hare airport, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta and Newark in the New York City region were the US airports most affected by delays and cancellations, according to FlightAware’s “Misery Map.”
Saturday’s delays and cancellations follow days of disruption as the storm swept across the country, bringing bone-chilling temperatures and whiteout conditions, with reports of a “bomb cyclone” extreme weather pattern near the Great Lakes. Some wind chill alerts have started to expire, with most ending by midday. But more than 100 million people remained under these alerts Saturday morning.
On Friday, there were nearly 6,000 canceled flights in the US, and close to 12,000 delays, according to FlightAware.
Greyhound bus service warned Thursday evening that trips in the Midwest or upper Northeast could be canceled or disrupted. In its alert, the company listed nearly 20 cities as among those impacted, advising passengers to check bustracker.greyhound.com for the latest information about specific routes.
Amtrak said Friday morning that the severe weather “has caused Amtrak to make several service and cancellations from now through Sunday, December 25.” The train company said impacted customers should be able to take trains leaving at similar times or on another day.
Those staying at home are also dealing with impact from the storms.
On Saturday, over 1.6 million homes and businesses nationwide were without power due to an Arctic blast and winter storm that tore down power lines. The storm is pummeling the Midwest and parts of the East with heavy snow, blizzard conditions and flooding along the Northeast coast, on top of frigid temperatures. It’s expected to continue through Sunday.
The weather could impact holiday gifts, as well.
The US Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and Amazon all recently said that the weather is disrupting operations.
The USPS said it had temporarily shut down 89 post offices, UPS warned “some delivery and pickup services” may be affected, and Amazon “temporarily closed” some of its sites in the impacted areas. FedEx said it was experiencing “substantial disruptions” at two processing hubs and that packages expected to be delivered Saturday could be delayed.
— CNN’s Aya Elamroussi, Forrest Brown, Karla Cripps, Haley Brink and Chris Isidore contributed to this report.
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