Old Man Winter Strands Travelers In South Florida
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) - Winter storms which have blanketed states to our north have left some travelers stuck in sunny South Florida.
Sunday morning at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International 29 departing flights and 15 arrivals from cities including Newark, Indianapolis, Boston and Chicago had been cancelled. At Miami International Airport, 48 departures and 29 arrivals were cancelled. Dozens of more flights have been delayed.
Palm Beach is also dealing with delays and cancellations.
To find information on departures and arrivals of flights, click here.
Terminals filled up with frustrated travelers trying to rebook or figure out how to make their connections. Some travelers scrambled to make alternate plans.
Travelers are urged to you check with their airline before heading out to the airport.
Sunday morning a plane from Toronto landed at Kennedy International Airport in New York and then slid into snow on a taxiway. No injuries were reported, but the airport temporarily suspended operations for domestic and international flights because of icy runways.
And the situation up north is expected to get worse before it gets better.
A "polar vortex" will affect more than half of the continental U.S. starting Sunday and into Monday and Tuesday, with wind chill warnings stretching from Montana to Alabama. The vortex is a counterclockwise-rotating pool of cold, dense air, and is behind the startling forecast: 25 below zero in Fargo, N.D., minus 31 in International Falls, Minn., and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago.
The bitterly cold temperatures already pushed into northern states Sunday morning. The National Weather Service reported a temperature of 9 below zero in Bismarck, N.D., and negative 21 at Duluth, Minn. At the height of the cold, wind chills may reach 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.
"It's just a dangerous cold," National Weather Service meteorologist Butch Dye in Missouri said Sunday morning.
Snow preceded the polar air and was expected to fall throughout much of Sunday from Michigan to Kentucky. Forecasts called for up to a foot in eastern Missouri and parts of central Illinois, several inches in western Tennessee and 1 to 3 inches in Kentucky.
Southern states are bracing for possible record temperatures, too. Meteorologists in central and north Georgia say temperatures could drop into the single digits by Tuesday, accompanied by wind chills as low as 15 degrees below zero.
Elsewhere, Minnesota has called off school Monday for the entire state — the first such closing in 17 years — as well as the Wisconsin cities of Milwaukee and Madison.
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