Sunday Travel Outlook: Central US to Bear Brunt of Rain, Snow

By Alex Sosnowski, AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist

November 28,2015; 9:25PM,EST

 

 

As millions head home from Thanksgiving getaways on Sunday, the weather may cause trouble on the roads and at airports from the southern Appalachians to the central Rockies.
According to the United States Department of Transportation, close to 20 million people will be traveling 50 miles or more on Sunday.
Areas of rain and fog will slow travelers down from central Texas and Oklahoma to parts of Virginia, and West Virginia. The wet and murky conditions with blowing spray from other vehicles will stretch along nearly a thousand miles of the Interstate-40 corridor. Intermittent rain will reach part of I-81 in Virginia.

Travel Trouble Through Sunday

From portions of the Red River Valley to the middle Mississippi, lower Ohio and Tennessee valleys, the rain will be heavy enough to cause flooding in urban and poor drainage areas.

Motorists may also find some secondary roads closed due to high water as streams overflow their banks from northeastern Texas to central Tennessee.
Sudden downpours will extend southward to the western and central Gulf Coast.
Fog and low cloud ceilings can occur in this swath as well. The conditions could slow down the rate of arriving and departing flights from Nashville to Dallas.

While the worst of the Thanksgiving ice storm will have diminished, icy travel will remain in portions of northwestern Texas, and western and central Oklahoma to central Kansas and southwestern Iowa.
By Sunday midday, above-freezing temperatures and salting operations will have alleviated most of the ice that covered the roads over the southern and central Plains. However, motorists and pedestrians should still use caution for patchy ice in colder and untreated areas.
Farther to the northwest, intermittent snow will continue over portions the central Rockies and will begin to expand later on Sunday and Sunday night.
RELATED:
Check AccuWeather MinuteCast® for Your Location
National Interactive Radar
El Nino-Driven Weather Pattern to Shape White Christmas Likelihood Across US
Motorists venturing through much of Colorado, northern New Mexico, southern Wyoming, eastern Utah and portions of Kansas and Nebraska will encounter snow and slippery travel.
Travelers may want to get an early start on Sunday as the snow will begin to pick up in intensity in eastern Colorado and eastern Wyoming to western Kansas to western and central Nebraska during Sunday night. This swath is likely to receive a few inches of snow with deteriorating road conditions and visibility along portions of I-25, I-70 and I-80.
The snow will evolve into a substantial storm over the central and northern Plains to the Upper Midwest during early next week.
Elsewhere, most places from the eastern Gulf Coast to the Atlantic Seaboard, the northern tier states, the Pacific Coast and the Southwest Desert areas will have dry travel conditions on Sunday and Sunday night.
Only spotty rain showers may survive the trip from the southern Appalachians to the I-95 corridor in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as I-77 in North Carolina through the last evening of the holiday weekend.

Otherwise, the vast majority of highway delays outside of the South Central states will be due to volume and accidents.
Some crews and aircraft may have been displaced due to the large storm over the South Central states this weekend. This could result in a few sporadic flight delays and changes on the East and West coasts.