Dense freezing fog moved into the Denver area Sunday morning, forcing delays and diversions of dozens of flights scheduled to arrive into Denver International Airport. This unfortunate event happened at the worst possible time, on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
The Federal Aviation Administration noted arrivals into the airport were delayed for at least two hours, KMGH-TV reported. As of 11 a.m. local time, Laura Coale of DIA said, "Unfortunately, the fog and winds are not working in our favor. Because of the direction of the wind it doesn't allow us to use all our runways right now."
"An arctic cold front blasted southwestward into the Denver area Sunday morning," said weather.com senior digital meteorologist Nick Wiltgen. "The cold air was nearly saturated -- humidity was near 100 percent -- and the east-northeast winds bringing it into Denver were blowing upslope toward the Rockies."
Wiltgen added: "The combination of cold, moist air and a wind blowing upslope led to very low clouds and thick fog -- in this case, freezing fog, since temperatures quickly plunged well below freezing. The fog, the icing concerns, the strong winds -- all of these are just bad news for trying to get planes in an out of a busy airport."
According to official observations, the temperature at DIA plunged from 42 degrees at 7:53 a.m. to just 26 degrees by 8:21 a.m., and 20 degrees by 8:46 a.m.
Coale stated more than 166,000 passengers were expected to pass through DIA on Sunday, 26,000 more than usual, the Denver Post reported. Monday is also expecting a large amount of passengers, at least 157,000.
Link: http://www.weather.com/news/news/denver-international-airport-thanksgiving-weekend-delays-fog
No comments:
Post a Comment