The FAA issued a ground stop for Dallas and Love Field on Wednesday as storms rolled over Texas, adding to a two-day wave of travel disruptions at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. Nearly 150 flights were canceled or delayed there on Wednesday, after nearly 700 flights were delayed on Tuesday.
The stoppage came as North Texas braced for at least 1 inch of rain from Wednesday through Friday, with the National Weather Service saying the greatest chance of flooding would come on Thursday. A severe thunderstorm watch was in place over central Texas, and the weather service warned some areas could pick up between 3 inches and 5 inches of rain.
The weather has already turned the region’s largest airport into the latest casualty of a storm system that has been moving across the state. Flights were being hit because of storms rolling over Texas, and the runway delays in Dallas came while airlines tried to recover from a heavy Tuesday backlog that left nearly 700 flights waiting.
That same system was also part of a broader pattern stretching far beyond Texas. Wednesday marked the last day of a heatwave in the northeast, where severe storms were expected to move through and drop temperatures from the mid-90sF to the mid 60sF. In New York City, temperatures reached roughly 92F in Central Park on Tuesday before the cooler air arrived.
Forecasters have been warning that the swings are not normal for this stretch of spring. Brett Anderson said the region’s “seemingly endless temperature rollercoaster” would continue through the holiday weekend with another sharp cooldown across the northeastern quarter of the nation, and he said the pattern has “clearly wreaked havoc on plants and agriculture” there as the area has bounced from record-breaking heat to hard freezes, then back to heat and now another chilly stretch.
For passengers in Dallas, the immediate problem is not the forecast two or three days out. It is whether the storms slow enough to let the airport dig out from a second straight day of missed flights. The ground stop suggests the answer, at least for Wednesday, was no.
