Severe Weekend Weather Disrupts Holiday Travel

More than 8,000 flights were delayed on Saturday amid threats of rain, snow and tornadoes across the country.

Thousands of flights around the country were delayed or canceled on Saturday because of severe weather, disrupting travel for many returning home after the holidays.

More than 8,000 flights within, into or out of the United States were delayed, and more than 200 others were canceled as of Saturday evening, according to data from FlightAware.

The delays were not as extensive as the ones on Thursday or Friday, and many passengers on Saturday said their flights were still on schedule. But for others, the delays meant missed connections and several headaches.

As of Saturday afternoon, nearly half of the flights originating from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and at least half of the flights from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston were delayed, according to FlightAware. About 40 percent of the flights were delayed at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. At New York’s Kennedy International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said flights that were pushed back had an average delay of more than two hours.

Inclement weather, or the threat of it, was affecting several different regions in the United States. In the West, large bands of moisture in the sky led to heavy rain and snow warnings in some areas. In the South, severe storms bringing the risk of tornadoes were expected over the weekend, and several tornadoes were already reported in the Houston area on Saturday. A storm system moving toward the Northeast also threatened to bring rain and snow.

Travel out of Texas was particularly challenging. At the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, one of the country’s busiest and the largest hub for American Airlines, the scheduling problems continued from earlier this week, when bad weather and a technical glitch briefly grounded the airline’s flights. Dense fog and storms in the days since have caused more delays.