Skip to footer

Where rain and snow could disturb Thanksgiving travel

Most of the northeast will see rain, but higher elevations west of the Interstate 95 corridor could see up to a foot of snow by Wednesday night.

|
Julie Jacobson/AP
John Eresian (l.) of Exeter, N.H. and his daughter from San Francisco make their way through Grand Central Terminal to catch a train to Connecticut for the Thanksgiving holiday, Nov. 25 in New York. Some Thanksgiving travelers along the East Coast were heading out early because of a forecast calling for a nor'easter that will bring rain and snow.
  • By Frank Eltman Associated Press

| MINEOLA, N.Y.

Thanksgiving travelers scrambled to change their plans and beat a storm expected to bring snow, slush and rain to the crowded Washington-to-Boston corridor Wednesday on one of the busiest, most stressful days of the year.

Forecasters said major Northeast cities will probably see moderate to heavy rain most of the day, though New York and other places were also gearing up for several inches of snow.

Higher elevations west of the Interstate 95 corridor could see as much as 6 to 12 inches before the nor'easter exits Wednesday night, meteorologist Andrew Orrison said.

"I always go on Tuesday to try to avoid the Wednesday rush, but it seems like more people are leaving on Tuesday now," said Bill Fraser, a landscaper from Henniker, New Hampshire, who was taking a train from Boston to New Rochelle, New York, to visit his mother for Thanksgiving.

Jenna Bouffard, a New York City public relations executive headed in the opposite direction, changed her bus ticket from Wednesday to Tuesday.

"I don't want to risk it," she said. "I'd rather be safe than sorry, and if it doesn't snow, then I just have an extra day at home with my family" in Uxbridge, Massachusetts.

Major airlines dropped their ticket-change fees for people flying in and out of the Northeast, allowing passengers to try to sneak on an earlier flight, though that appeared to be a challenging proposition, since most planes were filled.

By midafternoon Tuesday, just 14 flights within the US were canceled for Wednesday, according to tracking service FlightAware. That's well below the norm for even a sunny day. United said it was planning to cancel 100 flights Wednesday in and out of Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey — a small fraction of the traffic there. Delta planned to scrub 57 flights.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty airports, said it was lining up extra staff and snow removal equipment in the event of a heavy snowfall. Crews were prepared to work in 12-hour shifts if necessary, officials said.

At Newark Airport, retiree Sue Hansen, who lives in Roscoe, Illinois, arrived early on Tuesday to avoid the rush ahead of a big family reunion near Morristown, New Jersey.

"I've traveled the day before, and it was no good," she said, describing long lines, delays and lots of crowds. "This wasn't bad at all."

In Vermont, public safety officials warned that travel could be treacherous. Up to 16 inches of snow was forecast in some areas.

There was a bright spot in the forecast for residents of western New York, which last week saw up to 7 feet of snow.

"Buffalo will predominantly miss this event," Orrison said.

___

Associated Press Writers Jill Colvin in Newark, N.J., Denise Lavoie in Boston, and Scott Mayerowitz and Karen Matthews in New York contributed to this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Where rain and snow could disturb Thanksgiving travel
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/1125/Where-rain-and-snow-could-disturb-Thanksgiving-travel
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe