You’ve heard Peter rant and rave about some of the worst airports in America. Now someone is offering scientific evidence.

Peter sat down with Dr. Greg Forbes, severe weather expert for The Weather Channel, to talk about the Top 10 Worst-Weather Airports in America.

Peter Greenberg: When we talk about airports that are fun to be at and airports that are tough to be at, weather plays a huge role. It’s always me that ends up in a thunderstorm at Dallas, or grounded because of rain at LaGuardia, or thunderstorms in Miami.
Well, guess what? I got two out of the three yesterday, because I was trying to get to Miami from LaGuardia in the middle of a rainstorm. You know what? I didn’t make it. Greg, you’ve got a list of the top worst-weather airports. I mean some of them are no-brainers. We know about Chicago because that city has two seasons, right? Winter and construction. So O’Hare has got to be on it.

Greg Forbes: Definitely O’Hare ranked number one on our list. A lot of the cities in the top part of our list: Detroit, New York, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia. They’re in the northern-tier states where in the winter you get a lot of snow, a lot of low clouds, and wind. In the summer time, you get lots of thunderstorms. It seems like no time of year can you be free of weather delays in those areas.

Don’t fly out of busy airports if you don’t have to. Check out America’s Best Alternate Airports as well as More of America’s Best Alternate Airports.

PG: There is one on your list that most people would not guess, but I know it to be a fact because it happens all the time. It’s not because of storms; it’s because of low clouds and the marine layer, and that’s San Francisco.

GF: Yeah absolutely, San Francisco is notorious for having low clouds and fog. Of course, you’ve got not only the Pacific Ocean, but then the San Francisco Bay there that is putting in a lot of moisture. There can be that inversion, that little warm layer loft that just traps in all that moisture and makes for the low cloud layer.

PG: But 8 miles away it’s not there, which is why if you’re going to San Francisco, fly to Oakland; you’ll actually get in.

GF: Yeah, and that’s the case there. That’s the frustrating thing about the summer, too. Quite often the airport itself will not have the thunderstorms, but somewhere in the route that the aircraft has to take there can be a lot of thunderstorms. Of course the airplanes can’t fly through those, so they have to navigate around. That really stalls up the rate of traffic in flow and out flow from the airports because of what they call en-route weather.

PG: Yet there’s another airport that is not on your list which I think is interesting, and that’s Salt Lake City. For some reason they’ve managed to keep that airport open in every kind of weather. I think they have the best record of not closing that airport.

For tips on dealing with San Francisco’s fog while taking great pictures, check out Lee Foster’s Tips for Photographing San Francisco

GF: That’s an interesting observation. They’re sort of in the inner-mountain west. They’re a little bit protected from the Pacific moisture by the Sierra. And then of course the Rockies to the East protect them from the Gulf of Mexico moisture getting in. So they don’t get quite as many of the rainstorms, or the the fog conditions, or the snowstorms as places that would be directly west of the Sierra or the east of the Rockies They are a little bit dryer most of the time. 

Now, occasionally they do get some snowstorms, and once and a while with the north wind will get the wick effect and come down off the Great Salt Lake. But they benefit a little bit from that somewhat dryer northern extension of the desert southwest, as we sometimes call it.

PG: Well then of course you’ve got the busiest airport in America that it made your list, Atlanta.

GF: Atlanta has lots and lots of thunderstorm delays, rains and low-cloud problems. However, the good news is they’ve done some modifications at the airport over the years to make it easier to continue to have multiple runways in operation during bad weather. That’s is a big problem that some airports get shut down, or closed down to only operating one runway when they’re used to having two or there, and that of course really cuts down the rate at which airplanes can touch down and take off.

To listen to the entire interview, tune into Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio on our home page. Or sign up to be a Travel Insider (it’s only $4.95 a month and the first month is free!) to get access to the radio show, anytime and on demand.

Related links on PeterGreenberg.com:

• America’s Best Alternate Airports
• More of America’s Best Alternate Airports
• CBS News: Avoiding Travel Disasters
• Lee Foster’s Tips for Photographing San Francisco
• Weather News – Natural Disasters section