(CNN) — As millions of vacation travelers piled into cars and flooded airports with packed suitcases in tow over the weekend, the crippling winter storm that has been sweeping across the United States threatened to halt or significantly delay travel for many people.
This year’s increase in holiday travelers is expected to reach pre-pandemic levels. But many people’s plans were thwarted by the huge arctic blast that plunged much of the nation into freezing temperatures last week and continued to batter parts of the Upper Midwest and Northeast with heavy snow and blizzards over the weekend.
More than 15,000 flights within, to or from the US were canceled between Thursday and Christmas Day, while thousands more were delayed at airports from Atlanta to Las Vegas.
Southwest Airlines accounts for a large chunk of the cancellations, stranding thousands of passengers in an operations disaster that CEO Bob Jordan has called “the largest-scale event I’ve ever seen.”
Closed roads and hazardous road conditions also made driving risky, particularly in New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul said “dozens” of vehicles were abandoned on the roads and snowplows and rescue vehicles were seen buried under snow in ditches. In northern Erie County, more than 500 people were stranded in their cars Friday night, despite the county’s driving ban due to brutal blizzard conditions.
From stranded tour groups to strangers reunited on a long-distance trip, these are the stories of travelers who dealt with the travel woes of the chaotic Christmas weekend.
Stranded South Korean tour group finds shelter with New York couple
When Alexander Campagna heard a knock on his door as the storm raged outside, he thought it might be a neighbor or his father-in-law who lives near his home near Buffalo, New York, he told CNN.
But instead, he found a group of South Korean tourists standing on his steps, searching for shovels to pull out their bus, which had gotten stuck in the snow on its way to Niagara Falls.
“I thought ‘Oh no. This might be very serious and deadly,'” Campagna said. So he and his wife Andrea invited the group of 10 to wait out the storm at his house, communicating with three English-speaking members of the group, he said.
“I think from the very beginning, when our guests walked into our house, there was a belief that maybe this storm was regarding to pass and they would just get back in their vehicle and continue on their way to Niagara Falls, which is, in the best weather, regarding a 30-minute drive from our house,” he said. “With the blizzard, it might as well have been in another galaxy.”
Once the reality of their situation began to set in, Campagna went digging through the freezer for anything that might keep the small crowd fed. Soon, he put the couple’s frozen chicken broth and pork shoulder to use.
“We had a couple of natural cooks in the group who were happy to make exquisite Korean dishes,” he said.
Andrea Campagna told CNN that they “obviously” plan to keep in touch with their guests.
“Several of the guests said that we are more than welcome to visit them. And we can accept that offer. We really connected with them. They became like family to us,” he said.
While the couple appreciated the company of their guests, Andrea added that they also appreciate the volunteers and emergency and rescue personnel “who spent day and night caring for people trapped in their vehicles because of the cold.”
“Those are the real heroes in this Buffalo blizzard, which goes to show why Buffalo is called the city of good neighbors,” he said.
Police rescue dozens of trapped tourists
As two police officers in the storm-battered town of North Tonawanda, New York, worked once morest snow and wind to reach stranded drivers on Christmas Eve, they came across a large bus filled with dozens of stranded tourists. .
The bus, which was headed for Washington, veered off the road and got stuck in snow just inches away from a ditch, leaving the vehicle at risk of skidding and tipping over with regarding 60 people inside, the Washington police chief said. the City of North Tonawanda, Keith Glass, in a statement.
As the officers tried to take small groups of tourists to a nearby warming station, their truck remained stuck in the intensifying storm, Glass said.
“They ended up literally lining up these people and walking them from the bus to the warming station,” he told CNN. In his statement, Glass said the group was unharmed following walking regarding a mile through knee-deep snow.
“They spent the whole night in the warming shelter without much food,” he told CNN.
On Christmas Day, the police department used a SWAT bus and a school bus to take tourists to a hotel in Niagara Falls to “wait for the next leg of their trip back to Washington,” the statement said.
North Tonawanda is regarding 20 km from Niagara Falls.
Four strangers share a viral 20-hour trip
A group of travelers who didn’t know each other were desperate to find a way home Thursday when their flight from Tampa to Cleveland was abruptly cancelled. As they were discussing their options while standing at Tampa International Airport, someone brought up the idea: What if they rented a car and drove together?
Soon, Bridget Schuster, Greg Henry, Shobi Maynard, and Abby Radcliffe got into a car and were on their way on what turned out to be a 20-hour drive to get home for the holidays. Schuster documented the group’s road trip antics on his TikTok: they made snow angels on the highway, stopped for a meal, and braved dangerous road conditions together, garnering nearly 10 million views on their first video.
“Being from Ohio, honestly, I wouldn’t stop. I’ve driven through some pretty bad snow storms,” Henry told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota.
Maynard said the trip is a lesson in not automatically assuming the worst in others.
“I think a lot of times people can see the bad (in other people). For us, we automatically had that connection, it seemed, because we had that desperate moment of, almost like, ‘We have to go home to visit our families.'” , he said, adding: “It definitely (this teaches) just to trust people more. Maybe give them a chance.”
Family loses their luggage and child car seats on their trip to Disney
On Christmas Eve, Michelle Perkins, her husband JJ and their six children were ready to hop on a plane from Las Vegas to Orlando for a surprise trip to Disney World and Orlando Studios, the mother told CNN.
They would soon learn that they were among the thousands of Southwest Airlines passengers whose flights had been canceled over the weekend and into Monday.
While several airlines have canceled or delayed flights, Southwest accounts for a large portion of canceled flights. As of Monday, the airline had canceled 71% of its flights, just over 2,900 in total, as of 10:10 p.m. ET, according to FlightAware. The flight problems are expected to continue this Tuesday.
After Perkins and her family learned of the cancellation, the devastated family filed to baggage claim to collect child car seats and luggage, but were told their bags and belongings had been sent to Orlando, Perkins said.
“They turned us away without our luggage and without our car seats for our two young children,” he said, adding that luckily they had extra car seats.
Perkins’ husband waited on the phone with Southwest for nearly 10 hours to get reimbursed for his flights and file a baggage claim, he said.
He added that they were told their luggage was at the Las Vegas airport, but they have not yet been able to claim their bags, which contain Christmas presents from Santa.
