Winter storm Grayson sweeps across eastern US and Canada forcing 5,000 flights to be cancelled
More than 60 million people have been stuck in the path of the winter storm Grayson, which has been called a “bomb cyclone”. The phenomenon, known as bombogenesis, continues to sweep across large parts of the US eastern seaboard and eastern Canada and is expected to continue to affect the area into the weekend.
More than 5,000 U.S. airline flights have been cancelled at New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, all flights were temporarily halted because of whiteout conditions, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
On Thursday evening LaGuardia announced on Twitter that the suspension had been lifted. But the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said flights at JFK would not resume until 7am eastern time on Friday.
“The adverse weather conditions in New York and the east coast of the USA has caused disruptions to our flights. We ask customers to check the status of their flights before they travel to the airport,” Virgin Atlantic representatives said.
Virgin’s US partner Delta Air Lines grounded an additional 200 flights on Wednesday and 200 on Thursday as heavy snow and strong winds forced the suspension of all operations at New York JFK and LaGuardia airports.
“A reduced schedule at both NYC airports is expected Friday as the airline works to reset its operations in the region,” Delta warned.
American Airlines is among carriers waiving flight change fees because of “severe weather and other uncontrollable events” across 18 US east coast airports.
Wondering about the shape of the #blizzard? The powerful midlatitude #BombCyclone has several meso-vortices spinning within its center, #GOESEast ABI captured these images of the storm every minute today. #snowday See more #cool GOES imagery here: https://t.co/mbgRYot60A pic.twitter.com/Zzab51uurp
— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) January 4, 2018
The storm officially acknowledged under the term bombogenesis is clearly visible on NASA satellites.
“Bombogenesis is the technical term,” meteorologist Ryan Maue told The Associated Press.
“Bomb cyclone is a shortened version of it, better for social media. The actual impacts aren’t going to be a bomb at all. There’s nothing exploding or detonating.”
Customers of Kiwi.com who may be affected by the storm are advised to check their flight status with their airline. Thank you for understanding.
