Around 14,000 flights were either cancelled or delayed on Wednesday and another 4,500 were due to be halted today (Thursday), according to flight-tracking website FlightAware.com.
The threat of increasingly inclement weather forced Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to cease the vast majority of 2,500 of all arrivals and departures yesterday.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the airport only operated 300 of all flights scheduled. Roughly half of the Thursday flights to and from Washington and New York airports were also called off.
At least 13 deaths have been blamed on the storm so far. Reuters reported that three were killed when an ambulance skidded off an icy road in Carlsbad, Texas.
The storm is expected to shift up the north-eastern United States in the next two days with up to 15 inches of snow predicted.
Many outlets are touting the accumulation of ice and snowfall as ‘historic’ since the weather patterns are impacting parts of the US that do not typically experience such conditions.
Flight services are expected to return to normal by tomorrow, according to a spokesperson from Delta.
A summary of flight delays from FlightAware.com:
- Total delays within, into, or out of the US this week: 19,817
- Total cancellations within, into, or out of the US this week: 10,539
The service also has a Misery Map with a live visualisation of delays.