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Forensic weather expert: What to do when you’re snowed in

December 21, 2009

This weekend’s snowstorm in the eastern United States shut down several major airports and stranded tens of thousands of airline passengers. Most flights are operating normally this morning, but there’s always the trip home. I asked Howard Altschule, a meteorologist with Forensic Weather Consultants, what to do when weather threatens to ground your next flight.

Your flight is stuck in the snow. Now what?

If you’re stuck in the airport already because of weather delays with such a huge storm, one thing I would recommend is try to immediately get a hotel room nearby — especially if you have kids.


The last place you want to be is in an airport for 24 to 36 hours, sleeping on the floor. Of course, the early bird gets the worm in these cases. Also, you can check if other airlines have any availability on sooner flights. Sometime airlines will “work with each other” in the best interest of their clients.

Are there any new ways of keeping up with the pre-flight weather?

I recently became a fan of Southwest Airlines’ Facebook page. Southwest is my favorite airline. Their Facebook site was the first to provide me with a status update saying that major delays were now expected and they provided a link to details. I thought that was very cool. Way to take advantage of technology!

If an airline gives the reason for a delay as “weather” how certain can you be that it is telling the truth?

I think there are three potential reasons why there would be a weather delay. One would be bad weather at your departure airport, one would be bad weather at the airport you are traveling to and the third is if there is bad weather where your plane is coming from.

In our last interview we talked about the possibility that airlines might not tell the truth about a weather delay. How do you catch them in the act?

It’s pretty easy to pull up weather information on the internet to see what is going on. In fact, I have excellent Doppler radar data for any US city and forecast information for free on my Web site. You can take a look and see if the weather is indeed bad where the airline claims it is.

Is there anything air travelers can do, proactively, to ensure weather doesn’t interfere with their travel plans?

I always watch the weather at both my departure and arrival city a day or two in advance. If I see that there’s a large storm system threatening your departure airport, such as the blizzard that affected much of the Eastern United States, I always try to have a backup plan in place.

How do you do that?

Well, if my flight was leaving Philadelphia this past Saturday night and I knew or that a powerful snowstorm will be affecting my area that entire day and into the morning on Sunday, I would recommend just staying at home. Get flight status updates online or from customer service.

As was the case with this storm, the forecasts were excellent, there was plenty of warning and many people should have had a good idea that their flights would either be canceled or severely delayed.

If it were me, I would have expected major delays and cancellations and would have stayed at home in the comfort of my own home. Besides, I would not want to be flying in that weather anyway, the whole Buddy Holly thing seems too dangerous to me.

(Photo: Anirudh Koul/Flickr Creative Commons)

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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10 comments

  • Wendy Margules

    As a frequent traveler I keep an eye on weather conditions when a trip is in the works. My husband was skiing in Park City and due to fly home Sunday morning into JFK. On Friday I called Delta to change his flight to early Saturday morning hoping to get a change of flights for no fee. I was told they had no weather alerts and after hassling for awhile I said ok, I’ll pay the $150 fee and changed the flight. I checked Deltas website 3 hours later and they did have alerts posted to I called them back and they waived the fee immediately, but told me his new flight had been canceled. Being wise to weather messes I booked him on a red eye Friday night and he got home just in the nick of time. Being on top of weather is always important especially in the winter months.

  • http://www.travelswithcarole.blogspot.com Carole Terwilliger Meyers

    My daughter is caught in the East Coast snow at JFK. Her flight Saturday night on Delta was cancelled on Friday, then on Saturday rescheduled to Sunday. When she arrived at the airport that flight was cancelled and after a 3 1/2 hour-wait in a long, long line, she was put on standby for Monday morning at 7. At 4 a.m. this morning (Monday) she told us she now has a confirmed flight out at 2 pm. She has been at the airport this entire time. Poor baby. One thing we do need to learn to accept is that some things are out of our control, and some times you just need to go with the flow. Originally she was told the next confirmed flight she could get was Christmas Day; after surviving this mess, it turns out she’ll be home a tad earlier and be here for our Christmas Eve celebration.

  • Alia Naffouj

    I have a question though, if the weather is uncertain and you don’t show up at the airport because you opted to stay home, yet the bad weather didn’t hit until a little later and your flight wasn’t cancelled, do you lose your ticket,? Should you call your airline to see if they have made a call yet? I don’t want to make a call based on what I see just so the airline can turn around and say we didn’t see it that way, you have to pay a change fee or buy a new ticket.

  • Ames

    @Alia Naffouj and Wendy Margules hit on important points – if the passenger looks at the weather and sees it looks bad but maybe the storm could still blow out to sea, what is the best thing to do? If one is two hours away from the airport and allows for extra driving time in case the roads are bad and the two hours to check bags and get through security in an airport one believes will be crazier than usual, the passenger may need to make a decision much earlier than the airline. I would need to make a final choice almost five hours before my flight if I were to stay home. I cannot imagine the airline canceling that early or being too happy to reschedule without a fee. I am sorry for the way this weekend’s storm hit Washington DC and New York City, but up here in New Hampshire, we only got about four inches of beautiful fluffy snow – for us, almost nothing. If I had been planning to fly, it would have been a really tough call.

  • Jenny

    Last year my son was leaving Savannah with a change in Newark then onto Boston when we knew there was a storm predicted that afternoon for New York/Northeast. He and his friend called the airport that morning to ask US air if there was any way of changing flights to skip the Newark part and they wouldn’t do anything since flights weren’t cancelled. Once they landed in Newark, nothing was leaving until the next day, they ended up with a driver to Connecticut where a family member met them at a rest area to drive them back to NH. No refund b/c they were put on the next available flight, the following day. If only they could have changed their flights earlier in the day, it could have been a simpler ride home.

  • Joe Farrell

    If you are not a high level frequent flier – then your chances of getting a seat after a weather event of this magnitude during a holiday week are so close to zero as to effectively be zero. You will spend DAYS at the airport waiting for a flight – standing by in the off chance that someone with a confirmed res does not show up.

    The math works out this way – lets say Delta has 20 departures a day out of a town like Hartford. Those 20 departures have an average of 110 seats and operate 90% full during the run up to Christmas. Effectively there are 2200 seats a day in that market and no more than 220 go wanting for a passenger. Delta cancelled 1.5 days of flying at a minimum with this storm, probably 2, but lets be reasonable – there were 3000 passengers who missed flights due to weather cancellations. At a clearance rate of 220 passengers a day it takes 13 days to everyone back on track. Assuming half those passengers rebook on their own, it takes a little over 7 days to clear the backlog, which is what you see the airlines telling every one – that the last passenger will be serviced on Saturday.

    So – what is a weather stranded passenger to do?

    Step 1 – get a confirmed seat from the airline for whenever. Ask, beg, plead to be put on another carrier.

    Step 2 – can you buy a fully refundable seat in coach, business or F class for when you want to travel? If so – do it. The airline will then be forced to book you in that seat when you present your old ticket and you get a refund.

    Step 3 – another city? Remember, this storm hammered the east coast. But the cut off was really sharp – Bradley in Harford got 6″, Albany, NY got no snow. Can you rent a car one way to Albany, and be reaccomodated there? They still likely have extra seats and stand by there would be fruitful. You can do this to Stewart in NY, Allentown, Scranton, perhaps Manchester NH, certainly Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Stracuse – and the list goes on and on and on – just pick a connection city like Chicago, Cincy, STL, etc that never had the bad weather.

    Step 4 – divert to drive – rent a car for a week if you do not own one and drive. May not be the first choice – but you get there. Just be sure that when the airline cancels your flight on Dec 19, and tells you there are no confirmed seats until Dec 25, that you reserve that car immediately since others will have the same idea.

    And as for the forecasts being excellent? I want what this guy is smoking. The Thursday morning forecast for Dec 17 for Hartford CT was for PARTLY CLOUDY skies on Sat night with a chance of flurries in the southeastern sections if the storm came close enough. 24 hours later they STILL were only calling for scattered snow showers. Finally- by 2pm on FRIDAY the local weather forecasters, er, model huggers,. had cottoned to the fact this was coming – so – the forecast sucked more than 24 hours out.

    The FINAL choice is to leave early. Get to the airport and stand by for an earlier flight that gets you out of dodge before the bad weather hits – by fri am the airlines had posted storm warnings and were allowing people to rebook free – this privilege also includes the ‘hdden’ ability to leave early.

  • Doug

    “I think there are three potential reasons why there would be a weather delay. One would be bad weather at your departure airport, one would be bad weather at the airport you are traveling to and the third is if there is bad weather where your plane is coming from.”

    Something else to consider, as described by Patrick Smith at his great “Ask the Pilot” blog: weather and routing availability to planned alternate airports. As he explains, things are more complicated than just looking out the window.

    http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2007/11/16/askthepilot254/

  • Joe Farrell

    @Doug – the question I have is hard far down the pipe does the weather problem need to be before its no longer a weather problem? Your 3 scenarios, everyone agrees with – then there is Patrick’s explanation, but it could go on forever! Theoretically we could be still be seeing delays from the Blizzard of 2003. . . . or do crew problems go away at the end of every month? So how far removed can the airline make up the weather excuse?

  • Bill

    I certainly agree with the “get a hotel room” advice. If one can at all possibly stay in a hotel until the storm is over, then I’m sure it is easier on everyone. I guess the big thing when you travel is to be prepared to pay for things that happen…weather is not the airline’s fault, it is a risk every traveller takes when they go somewhere.

  • Mekhong Kurt, Bangkok, Thailand

    While Mr. Altschule’s comments are extremely helpful, they don’t get into one area I was left wondering about should I ever find myself in which heeding his advice seems the best course of action.

    That is, if my area is snowed in and the predictions are flights will be at best delayed, at worst canceled, and I decided to stay snug at home and miss my check-in time — am I left high and dry when I *do* want to fly? Will a phone call to the airline keep me covered? Or can the airline beg off, even if I have the details of my call(s), such as the time, with whom I spoke, his/her station and rank, the number I called, and so on?

    I realize that blizzards (and other weather) isn’t an airline’s fault, but am just trying to learn what, if any, rights I have. I suppose the airlines have some rights, too, in such situations, which I feel is only fair. But who is entitled to what, and under what circumstances/requirements?

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