Monday dawned in Las Vegas with the promise of rain, a pledge it kept with steadfast resolve. At Harry Reid International Airport, the skies were a thick canopy of gray—low clouds hung perilously close, as if threatening to swallow the earth. By mid-afternoon, the bustling hub of air travel became a theater of stillness and waiting. Some 78 flights had no choice but to cancel, while an agonizing count of 590 found themselves tethered to delays, hostages to the whims of weather.
The morning’s tempest forced the hand of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), compelling an airport closure at the stroke of 10 a.m. PT. But what was meant to be a brief pause—a hiatus to end by noon—stretched longer, its arms reaching well into the afternoon.
Pilots, crew, and passengers alike looked to their timepieces as the departure schedule became a cacophony of alerts and updates. By 3 p.m., FlightAware, a vanguard of the skies, delivered the grim prophecy: an average delay of 1 hour and 3 minutes for departures, while arrivals had their patience tested for around 1 hour and 9 minutes. And yet, for some, delays stretched into a protracted battle of hours.
The ground, not spared by the weather’s ire, echoed the chaos above. Ground delays were expected to persist, like an unwelcome guest, until the clock marked 11 p.m. PT that Monday night.
Low clouds were the culprits, announced by the airport as if in a public mea culpa for the gridlocked journey it had become part of. “Monitor your flight status with your airline,” came the advisory from airport officials—not as a suggestion, but as a near edict for those journeying to and from the heralded gateway of travel, those ensnared in the day’s atmospheric caprices.
As if to choreograph with the delays, light rain began a soft pitter-patter dance across Las Vegas by mid-afternoon—a rhythm set to continue into the evening. The forecast was unequivocal, heavy rain was coming. One hundred percent certainty in meteorological predictions is seldom seen, but that day Vegas saw it—a quarter inch of rain or more awaiting the city.
Nightfall would offer no respite, the cold creeping in with a predicted low of 49 degrees amidst northeastern winds of 5 to 10 mph. But Tuesday held in its grasp the prospect of change. The morning’s showers were to eventually taper off, leaving behind overcast skies and a high reaching the mid-50s.
By Wednesday, the weather seemed content to tease, offering partly cloudy conditions in the morning before closing in with clouds by afternoon. A high of 59 degrees dangled the faint hope of warmer days.
Yet, Las Vegas was not alone in its plight. Across the United States, a canvas of delays and cancellations painted a grim national picture. By midafternoon, FlightAware bore witness to a staggering 4,468 delays within, into, or out of the U.S., and cancellations numbering 895.
From Chicago’s wind-ravaged runways to the mist-shrouded arch of St. Louis, down to the rain-drenched streets of Seattle—the day’s tumult knew no bounds, seizing the nation in a grip of delay and uncertainty. In this synchronized halt, travelers found solace in shared stories of disrupted plans and unanticipated layovers, a collective narrative woven into the fabric of a rainy Monday that those at Harry Reid International Airport would not soon forget.
