Weather Outside Frightful For Fliers

The season's first major winter snow storm hammered the Chicago area with ice, snow and sleet Saturday, making highways treacherous and canceling hundreds of flights.

The storm system left several inches of snow in some parts of the Chicago area, but worsened Saturday evening when the snowfall turned into freezing rain.

More than 400 flights were canceled at O'Hare International Airport and 25 were reported stalled at Midway International Airport over stormy conditions, according to the Associated Press.

Flights at O'Hare were delayed anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes.

"The snow has turned over more to freezing rain, so the weather and low visibility is causing those delays," Cunningham said.

The same front that brought miserable conditions to Chicagoland blew into the northeastern US Sunday, blanketing the area with upwards of a foot of snow and wrecking havoc at several of the nation's busiest airports.

"It's kind of a mess -- probably the best way to term it in one word," meteorologist Bob Kilpatrick told AP.

Hundreds of flights into New York-area airports -- Kennedy, Newark Liberty and LaGuardia -- were delayed up to two hours Sunday.

FMI: www.ohare.com/, www.panynj.com, www.nws.gov