CHICAGO – Air travel in the Midwest was returning to normal Saturday following a storm that blanketed the Great Lakes region with several inches of snow.
Only two dozen flights were canceled Saturday morning at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, aviation officials said. Across town, Midway Airport officials reported no cancellations. Both reported no significant delays.
That was in sharp contrast to Friday, when nearly 300 flights were canceled at O'Hare because of the weather and delays averaged 30 to 45 minutes. Delays at Midway Airport averaged 30 minutes, with about 25 cancellations.
By early afternoon Saturday, the storm had largely blown out to sea after spreading snow across northern New England, with rain elsewhere in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic states. Radar showed snow lingering in northern Maine and Canada's Maritime Provinces.
On Friday, both runways at Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport were closed due to snow for about an hour in the afternoon and at least two hours in the evening, airport spokesman Ryan McAdams said.
The Green Bay Packers asked for 300 people to help shovel snow Saturday at Lambeau Field in preparation for Sunday's game against Detroit.
At Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich., snow caused some radar equipment to shut down automatically, closing one runway to arriving planes for about two hours, said Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Planes were diverted or circled while crews replaced the device, which tells aircraft whether they are properly lined up for landing.
Five to 7 inches of snow was reported in the region. Milwaukee's total at Mitchell International was 6.3 inches, topping the record for the date of 5.3 inches set in 1968.
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