over the plags we have teams out in the airport right now handing out blankets and pillows or anything that passengers who may be stranded at the airport may need. reporter: for days airlines encouraged passengers to reschedule ahead of the storm. have your boarding passes out reporter: tonight, chicago o hare and midwdway top thehe list of cancellations. i was freaked out because i ve never been in like a blizzard or like snow or any weather like that before. reporter: highlighted in red on flight aware s misery map, today s aviation choke points, ground delays in denver, chicago, new york, atlanta, and washington rippling across the country. here in new york, laguardia, jfk, and newark make up the biggest airport system in the country, and a quarter of all air traffic flies into, out of or through new york airspace. here in chicago, at the united airlines operations center, united s biggest hub, systemwide they re going to be averaging 8.3 million passengers through the h
you so much for jumping on. we ll follow up with this because this is happening as we speak and residents in memphis need to now prepare for what this is going to mean as rolling blackouts with these freezing and subzero temperatures will be setting in and now they ll have to face rolling blackouts at least for a period of time. mayor, thank you for jumping on. we will follow up with you. thank you very much. thank you, kate. these storms are causing a holiday travel nightmare at airports across the united states today. more than 4,000 cancellations so far. let s get to cnn s pete muntean at chicago o hare. you ve been camped out there. even your flight was canceled which i didn t know that was possible to cancel pete s flight but in all seriousness, what are travelers dealing with? reporter: you know, travelers are dealing with more desperation now than they were yesterday because they were still able to get out ahead of the storm but the cancellations just continue to go up and
bags, pushing it back from the gate and getting up to the gate if it happens. it s tough for them. listen. it s really about that frigid temperature you re seeing. that limits the ability of ground crews to operate. they make it look easy, you see they ve got a lot of winter weather gear but there is still only so long these workers can be on the ground servicing those aircraft before it s a safety issue and they need to get back inside. reporter: look at the security line here at chicago o hare. 20 minutes long according to the sign here, it is not done just yet. the rush is continuing to happen here, kate. also, it s not just passengers, the rush for packages is on too. u.p.s., fedex, the postal service tell us they have contingency plans in place although we may see some packages delayed as they try to get on your doorstep by christmas day because of this weather. and just taking it full circle, i don t know if you heard my conversation with the
cancellations across the united states, according to data from flightaware. more than 5,000. and that s on top of the almost 8,000 delays we have seen in flights across the country, all of that happening just two days before christmas where everybody, at the very least, is trying to get somewhere warm or close to family members, because we re here at o hare where the airport has announced more than 500 cancellations on its own here, not to mention the average arrival times of planes coming in is delayed by about 30 minutes, which when you think about connections, it affects those and could potentially leave people stranded. we talked to two passengers a little earlier today who had their flight canceled tonight with their entire family. they were going to go all the way to new zealand and now won t be able to get out for another two days. take a listen to some of how they are dealing with these cancellations. we hopped on an earlier flight thinking we were going to get in, and even t
the way out was saying, you know, this is one of the last flights into chicago from austin, so we felt really lucky. and then, you know, we came to find out that everybody had gotten delayed and now we re going through l.a. but i think it s going to be fine. it s been changing by the minute. reporter: and that s the thing, all these people you re talking to are trying to figure out what is changing with our flights, are they delayed, is it canceled, am i going to have to get a hotel. we were also downstairs at o hare, a long line of people trying to figure out where their baggage is. they might check in, their flight gets canceled, they don t know if they can get their bags. so all of these factors coming into play when that demand to at least get home or to other places is as high as really it would ever be over the course of the year. omar jimenez at chicago s o hare, thank you so much. the big question, how long is this going to last? eric van dam is in atlanta where it feel