This has already happened but I'm asking here in the hopes I can learn from the experience.

Had a ticket last Friday BUF-ORD-CMI (Champaign, IL) departing from BUF at 6:25pm. There was a winter storm closing in that day, and on Thursday I was looking out for a travel alert to be issued, so I could either move to an earlier flight or, more likely, drive (leaving at 7am and missing the bad weather completely).

The travel alert was issued but didn't include BUF, as it didn't seem to include airports further west than Albany. In hindsight, I should've called AA at this point but I didn't because 1) I figured that if they wanted to waive BUF, they would've done and 2) I had faith that by not issuing alerts that far west, they had hopes of operating normally.

All was good until about 5pm, when the freezing rain started. The inbound plane was delayed 30 minutes before factoring any delays at BUF (I only had a 30 minute connection at ORD anyway) and the inbound flight into ORD that was operating the CMI flight was also delayed. I approached the bag drop agent and said I was doubtful that this was going to go well for me. They needed no convincing of that, and promptly cancelled the ticket (in fact, they said they wouldn't board me even if I wanted to, because of the near guarantee I'd be stranded in ORD as the CMI flight was the last of the day).

By 5:30 the snow was coming down and I had to make a 14 hour overnight drive, in the middle of a winter storm, which was unpleasant and challenging for both me and my car.

Anyway, my question is, if this happens again (they don't issue a travel alert for an airport but it's looking likely there'll be issues) am I free to make other plans or am I forced to go to the airport and wait for the delays to happen before I can do anything? I would've loved to have driven and told them I couldn't afford to risk their schedule, and to please refund me.