the tests won t go out until early next month. the administration passed on a proposal to buy hundreds of millions of tests in october and have them ready for the holiday season to try to prevent a surge going on that we re seeing now. the president yesterday said he did not reject that proposal. back to you, julie. julie: rich edson, thank you. the holiday travel nightmare is not letting up. hundreds more flights canceled today on top of thousands grounded since christmas eve. some airlines blame bad weather and staffing shortages due to the covid surge. mike tobin is live in chicago with the latest. hey, mike. good news right now is at least for this particular window in time it looks like it is getting a little better. the tsa line behind me by o hare standards it is normal to light. as we walk over here and look at the board with the flights, not a whole lot of red up there.
insulated cups at home. jon: what about weather, how is it going there in chicago? reporter: it is not so bad. snow started out in chicago. some of the forecasters one to three inches in the midwest and four inches in chicago. if you look at the gate right now by o hare standards this is average to light. we heard through aaa there are some delays out of detroit but really no big deal. we heard other terminals here in o hare the traffic is really quite light. the only people may be looking at trouble while they re driving, or traveling are the drivers in part because of the snow but also because of gasoline is now up over $3 a gallon for the first christmas i believe ever, jon. jon: mike tobin live in chicago. thank you. jenna: mike was talking about the weather in chicago. chicago is is braing for more snow and certainly not alone in that. a massive storm system some are now calling, get this, snowball express. dumping snow across much of the heartland right now. this is the scene a
someplace to go. it is one thing to make the commitment to write things on the internet and another to make your stand in therement traffic by o hare standards on thanksgiving is kind of light, shep. looks like it. anything else of note there, mikey? there are reports of trouble. mostly it is people threatening the tsa workers and calling them things like pervert. there have been a couple of small incidents of violence. it is nothing major. shep, i am reluctant to tell people they are going to have an easy day traveling. mostly because there are spots of bad weather floating around out there. and it gets worse as the day goes on. mighty mike tobin at chicago s o hare. thank you. some travelers had some holdups. spirit airline s check in system crashed. at two airports we foe of, one in florida and the other in meche mitch, employees had to check in passengers manually which lead to long lines, as you might imagine. they called in extra staff across the country, but they
bring your formula with you, the same rules apply to liquids, but you can probably get away without the insulated cup. rick? rick: as if travelers didn t have enough to worry about, there s weather to be concerned about as well. right, mike? reporter: yeah, possibly 1-3 inches in the midwest. i can tell you here at the airport there s just a little bit of snow coming down, nothing sticking. most of the travelers got their moving down yesterday, so as i look around o hare airport, and there s a guy who s been through o hare a couple two, three times, this is really light by o hare standards. we ve heard about some delays as much as 15 minutes, but as a guy who has traveled quite a bit, you probably can tell the folks out there that 15 minutes is not a long time to wait for a flight. rick: that s not bad at all. you know, i want to ask you quickly because we saw over the last couple months a lot of people upset about the patdown procedures. how s everything going? anybody sort of losin