STORMS WREAK HAVOC ON US HOLIDAY TRAVEL

Two winter storms hit the US at the weekend, prompting 6,000 flight delays and more than 800 cancellations for Thanksgiving holiday travellers on Sunday on what is the heaviest travel day of the year. More than 3.1m were scheduled to fly on Sunday. One storm in the northeast quadrant of the country elicited winter storm warnings for 125m people across 15 states. Up to a foot of snow was expected from the Dakotas to Michigan and parts of the northeast. The icy conditions were blamed for a 25-car pile-up on Interstate 68 in western Maryland and a plane sliding off a runway in Buffalo, New York. The poor weather caused flight delays around the country, with four-hour waits seen in San Francisco. Another storm in the western US was expected to bring several feet of snow at higher elevations in California and up to a foot of snow stretching into the upper Midwest.