Whether you’re coming or going, air travel to and from Northern California over the Thanksgiving holiday promises to get a little messy.
Maybe not “2016 messy,” when storms and record numbers of inbound and outbound passengers snarled the region’s transit hubs like crazy. But messy nonetheless.
For starters, there will be a lot of people crisscrossing the country this holiday season. The main trade group for U.S. airlines is predicting that 28.5 million Americans will fly over a 12-day period around the holiday, an increase of 3 percent over last year. Airlines for America officials said that the Sunday after Thanksgiving will be the busiest travel day, with about 2.9 million people flying.
There’s more: nearly 51 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles away from home for Thanksgiving, according to the American Automobile Association, which also represents a small increase over 2016.
And here’s where it gets a little bit ugly for Northern California.
While this coming Sunday to Tuesday may offer the best national travel weather we’ll see for awhile, AccuWeather meterologists said in a report that “the only major exception will be the approach of a new storm from the Pacific that will spread some rain and high country snow into the Northwest. Seattle will be the major airport most affected by the new storm on Sunday.”
And then, it’s our turn: “The rain will shift southward into San Francisco during Sunday night and Monday morning.”
So travelers hoping to fly out of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose or Santa Rosa for the start of a long Thanksgiving break back east or down south should brace for storms and the flight delays they could spawn. In fact, we all got a taste of that on Thursday when an ”atmospheric river” storm system and low clouds led to 37 flight cancellations, and hundreds of delays at San Francisco International Airport, mostly affecting short-haul flights up and down the West Coast. Roughly a quarter of the flights at SFO were also experiencing delays averaging from 45 minutes to an hour, spokesman Doug Yakel told ABC News.
Nationwide, the latest forecast models suggest that while the country’s weather pattern is much less likely to lock into a cold and stormy pattern through the Thanksgiving weekend across the Northern states, the Deep South could experience multiple days of unsettled conditions.
“Weather systems are now more likely to keep moving along, rather than stall across the northern half of the nation over the next week to 10 days,” according to AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Elliot Abrams.
Residents flying east for the holiday should keep in mind that the rest of the country will be saddled with multiple storm systems, starting tonight. Here’s how AccuWeather sees it unfolding:
“As Thanksgiving travel ramps up, one storm will sweep across the nation from Friday to Sunday. Spotty rain and snow will affect the central and northern Rockies on Friday. On Friday night and Saturday, drenching rain and locally heavy thunderstorms are forecast from the middle Mississippi Valley to the lower Great Lakes region. Motorists may have to slow their commute and rely heavily on their windshield wipers. Airline passengers from St. Louis to Nashville, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Pittsburgh may face some turbulence and delays.”
And there’s more where that came from:
“The same storm will race across the Eastern states from Saturday night to Sunday. Over the Appalachians and in the coastal mid-Atlantic and New England, several hours of rain are in store. There may be a rumble of thunder. People catching flights Saturday night to Sunday morning from Washington, D.C., to New York City and Boston may experience some delays. In parts of the Appalachians, the rain may end as a brief period of snow. East of the Appalachians in the South, a singular gusty shower may mark the arrival of the chilly air in lieu of long-lasting rain during Saturday night.”
You get the picture.
“Any rain to start the day on Wednesday in the coastal Northeast is likely to end during the morning,” according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Kristina Pydynowski. “However, this may be enough to put some airlines behind schedule for the day and may lead to ripple effects across the nation as the day progresses.”
In other words, dear travelers, be prepared.
