business as usual. the lift may be closed but people are going up the mountain and skiing. what if there are wind gusts today? are they making any changes? it doesn t appear to be making any changes at this moment. i m going to step out of the shot for just a moment. you can see the lift is fuel. this is the super quad, one of the newest lifts they installed here at shul gar loaf a few years back and it s running at fuel capacity. it s crowded. the accident is not keeping people away from the mountain at all. they just had 22 inches of snow up here. it s incredible skiing. shul gar loaf is one of the gems of the northeast, and people are coming up to experience it. rob and his wife maureen were fine, not injured at all in the incident. nice job reporting. stuck in an airplane, on the tarmac for nine hours.
and a lot of it. this time, they ve left it here and it doesn t seem to be going anywhere, alina. i don t understand it. i mean, the city is normally the mayor is normally so wonderful in the response to storms and streets are cleared out like nobody s business. but this time around, it s just mind boggling. we have sanitation workers working around the clock. i don t know what s going on. anyway, chris knowles, thank you. reporter: something happened at the beginning go ahead. reporter: something must have happened at the beginning of the storm to delay the trucks. seems to be the key to this storm. got it. all right. chris knowles unlocking the mystery. thank you for joining us from brooklyn. we have new details on a terrifying ski lift accident in maine. it happened yesterday. broke here right on our air on cnn. investigators now want the know why a cable slipped from it pulley at the popular sugarloaf ski resort. some people fell, you know, as
the blizzard that pounded the northeast. now we ve heard the herrer stories about passengers stalk on the tarmac at jfk airport for 12 hours. can you imagine that, with children sitting around you that you re trying to entertain? in the middle of this mess several airlines confirming that they are raising fares. united, continental and delta says they will raise the cost of a ticket on many domestic routes by 20 bucks round trip. american airlines may also be hiking its fares. there are reports that ricing fuel costs may be to blame. new developments in the horrifying ski lift accident in maine. investigators at the sugarloaf resort now say that turbulent winds were a primary factor in the accident that left eight people injured. witnesses say they heard a loud noise before folks started plunging to the ground. trace gallagher has more from our new york city newsroom. trace, you know, if you ski you ve been up there turbulent winds are not uncommon.
winter whop today. an arctic blast from alaska. won t be saying it again for a long time. will bring an inch of rain or more and wind gusts. town town los angeles has seen its wettest december in a long time. a preliminary investigation blames high winds for tuesday s ski lift accident in maine. eight people were hurt when several chairs tumbled to the ground. some 200 skiers were stranded on the lift. one a cnn employee. all of the sudden there was a gust of wind and it was a bump. we felt a little bump. a strange bump you don t feel on chair lifts. and we looked up and we saw the five chair lifts fall to the ground in a big puff of white powder snow came up and people started screaming in horror that
the rockies with heavy snow, even salt lake city, more than a foot as we go into wednesday night. for the southeast it s been pretty chilly over the past couple of days. fortunately temperatures are warming up and it will be warmer by the afternoon. now back to you, rob and mike. ava, thanks. here s the rest of your wednesday weather. the rainstorm in the west should stretch into the phoenix area where we ll see about 10 inches of snow from that system well into the dakotas and northern minnesota. expect showers and thunderstorms from houston and new orleans north to st. louis. meanwhile, 40 degrees in omaha. 36 in chicago. 28 in fargo. boise 34. portland 42. sacramento 51. 30s meanwhile from boston down to baltimore. 51 in atlanta. and a damp 66 in new orleans. weather or faulty equipment may have led to a ski lift accident in maine. some skiers fell while others were stranded 30 feet in the air when the lift failed. it was a frightening scene as you can imagine at the sugar