'Once-In-A-Generation' Storm Hits The U.S.

Flight Cancellations Surpass 2,000 As “Once-In-A-Generation” Winter Storm Batters US

Via ZeroHedge

Update (1613ET):

A massive winter storm is disrupting air travel across the country.

Flight tracking website FlightAware reports nearly 2,200 flights were canceled by 4 pm EST on Thursday, and delays of flights within, into, or out of the US were around 6,300.

Already, airlines have canceled 1,600 flights for Friday.

FlightAware’s misery map shows flight delays and cancelations are widespread as the “once-in-a-generation” winter storm traverses the country.

A powerful winter storm and cold blast will wreak havoc across the central and eastern US through the weekend and bring what the National Weather Service calls a “once-in-a-generation type event.”

More than 100 million people across the US are under winter weather alerts which extend across 37 states, dipping as far south as Texas.

NWS said heavy snowfall, strong winds, and dangerously cold temperatures would affect areas from the northern Great Basin region through the Plains, Upper Midwest, Great Lakes, and the northern/central Appalachians starting today and lasting through the weekend.

“At the forefront of the impressive weather pattern is a dangerous and record-breaking cold air mass in the wake of a strong arctic cold front diving southward across the southern Plains today and eastward into the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys by tonight,” the weather agency said. 

“Behind the front, temperatures across the central High Plains have already plummeted 50 degrees F in just a few hours, with widespread subzero readings extending throughout much of the central/northern Plains and northern Rockies/Great Basin … these temperatures combined with sustained winds of 20 to 30 mph and higher wind gusts of up to 60 mph will continue to lead to wind chills as low as minus 40 degrees across a large swath of the Intermountain West and northern/central Plains, with more localized areas of minus 50 to minus 70 possible through the end of the week,” it continued. 

The weather service’s office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, reported a stunning 56-degree temperature drop in 6 hours overnight as the Arctic blast swept across the central US.

Ryan Maue, a private meteorologist, tweeted a weather model showing the massive cold blast pouring down into the Lower 48.