Look at that line of blue crap in Missouri and southern Illinois: that might throw a wrench into our travel plans tomorrow.
The SDF to IND to DTW to YUL trek might just bog down in DTW, where as of this writing, we expect 6-10 inches of snow to fall in a 12 hour time window from 4am-4pm Friday. This piece of weather appeared seemingly out of nowhere on Wednesday afternoon.
One can respond a few ways, ranging from curling up in a ball and crying, to a laissez faire approach, to a proactive rebooking strategy.
I’m a relatively new convert to the more zen “vacation starts when you leave and whatever happens, happens” worldview. Despite that, I’d still like to know that we can get to Montreal on Friday, without being delayed for a few hours or until Saturday.
Detroit has a good reputation these days for pushing the traffic through, and keeping the runways in good shape, even in heavy snow. If our flight to or from DTW isn’t canceled preemptively or because of wind/snow, we’ll probably make it with a moderate delay. If it’s canceled preemptively, or the storm forecast worsens, I have an ace in the hole – an extremely cheap direct flight to Montreal from another nearby airport unaffected by weather. I might use that escape hatch tonight. Chuck is even less tolerant of delays than I am.
Our friends Bob and Michael are scheduled to arrive late Friday night via Chicago, which will endure this storm tomorrow, too.
We’ve been quite lucky along the way. In 2004, we were delayed around 6-7 hours in Toronto, while the airport tried to dig itself out of smaller snowstorm. That was rather chaotic, but we made it. And up until now, our trips have been uneventful, on time, even.
Well, here goes… we’ll talk to you on the other side!