- Weather forecasters have warned that Northeast America is set to endure a coastal storm ahead of Thanksgiving
- It comes as the AAA predicts 55.4 million travelers will hit the roads, seas and skies ahead of the holiday
- Coastal communities in New England, including Martha’s Vineyard and Downeast Maine, are set to experience the worst impacts, including high speed winds and rain
Millions of Americans may face delays and disruption to their Thanksgiving travel plans with new weather maps showing a brewing coastal storm could hit as early as Friday.
A cold front and a storm system off the Eastern Seaboard are being monitored by weather forecasters as more than 55 million Americans prepare to travel ahead of the holiday next week.
Coastal communities in New England are set to experience the worst impacts, including high speed winds and rain.
Wind gusts of at least 20 to 30 mph are expected to impact the region on Friday and last well into Saturday.
Fox Weather trackers suggest the wet weather will begin on Friday and continue through Saturday.
The precipitation could even include snow showers in the higher elevations of New York, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
Martha’s Vineyard and Downeast Maine also have the potential for multiple inches of rain through Saturday.
Coastal Maine and Downeast Maine ‘could see some pretty hefty rain over the next few days with this storm,’ according to Fox Weather meteorologist Haley Meier.
However, much of the I-95 corridor will escape the worst of the precipitation with cities including Philadelphia and New York not expected to see more than an inch of rainfall.
‘You’ve got this front approaching from the west that kind of helps guide this system up the coastline’ Fox Weather meteorologist Ian Oliver explained.
‘We had two dry weekends in a row in the Northeast. It will not be three by the looks of it,’ Oliver added.
The National Weather Service office in Boston says it is not expecting any flooding concerns from the storm system, but it will be windy at times.
AAA predicts 55.4 million travelers will head 50 miles or more from home for Thanksgiving this year, a 2.3 percent increase on last year and the third highest forecast since 2000.
Weather conditions on the roads will be of paramount importance as most Thanksgiving travelers will drive to their destinations, the organization predicts, with 49.1 million drivers expected to get behind the wheel.
Transportation software company INRIX expects Wednesday, November 22, to be the busiest day on the roads during the Thanksgiving holiday travel period – with average travel times as high as 80 percent over normal in some metro areas.
Some 4.7 million people will fly over the holiday, it anticipates, the highest number of Thanksgiving air travelers since 2005, and 1.55 million travelers will get to their destination by cruise, bus and train.
The most popular domestic destinations are cities New York, Las Vegas, Orlando and Miami, Laura Lindsay, global travel trends expert at Skyscanner told USA Today.
This year will also be affected by an El Niño winter caused by a shift in the distribution of warm water in the Pacific Ocean around the equator.
This change in air and ocean currents around the equator can have a major impact on the weather patterns around the globe by creating pressure anomalies in the atmosphere.
The shift has a big impact on weather patterns around the globe – and this year’s El Niño is expected to be the strongest since 2015 – which saw the warmest U.S. winter on record.
During an El Niño winter weather temperature fluctuations will bring more snow than average in the Midwest area of the U.S. and western states like Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah.
New England confronts far less snow than normal during intense El Niño seasons – New York, Vermont and parts of Maine are likely to see far less snowfall this winter than the average from 1991-2020.