NYC airports facing 6-hour delays as massive snowstorm turns holiday travel into nightmare
Airports across the New York City area — and the northeast — are facing horrendous delays after a snowstorm dumped up to eight inches of snow on the tri-state.
LaGuardia Airport was under a ground stop, with delays of nearly six hours as of noon Sunday.
JFK International Airport was also placed under a ground delay Sunday morning, and was facing delays of just over three hours.
A ground stop means all flights headed to the airport could be held at their departure airports until clear to fly – which leads to delays fanning out across the entire country.
Newark’s ground stop during the storm resulted in delays of just over four hours.
New Jersey’s Teterboro airport was also placed on a ground stop by Sunday afternoon.
Philadelphia was faring better than its neighbors, with delays just over an hour.
Other airports across the region – from Boston down to Washington DC — were forced to dedicate time to de-icing their planes before departure.
Sunday’s snowfall brought between 1 and 4 inches to parts of the city – the Big Apple’s first major snowfall of the season.
Parts of Long Island and New Jersey saw up to 8 inches, according to National Weather Service findings.
Pennsylvania also saw widespread snow dumps of 6 to 8 inches, as well as pockets where between 8 and 12 inches fell, according to the National Weather Service.
In Brooklyn, some residents reported scattered power outages, which Con Edison rushed to fix.
Despite the snowfall, the travel chaos seemed to be reserved for the airways, with highways across the region being mostly cleared and running smoothly by Sunday afternoon.
The snowfall comes as the northeast endured a days-long blast of arctic temperatures of freezing and below, which were set to abate Monday into mid-week.
Temperatures are expected to stay in the 20s and 30s Monday and Tuesday, but begin climbing into the 40s and then 50s by Thursday, before dropping back down to the 30s over the weekend, Fox Weather forecasts show.