Originally Posted by
narvik
Yikes.
We had severe thunderstorm warnings with alerts going off all yesterday and today in the Poconos (about 100 miles from EWR) .
Turned out to be nothing more than heavy rain and some lightning.
Nothing extraordinary; but the again, nothing extraordinary is required for EWR to go into to full melt-down mode.
The NYC Terminal area is one of the busiest in the world, with JFK, LGA, EWR, HPN, ISP, TEB, etc. You have to look at the big picture: Lines of severe storms hundreds of miles from EWR (or where you are observing the weather) will severely reduce capacity -- with all planes for all airports, both arriving and departing, vying for the same airspace. You could have "severe clear" at EWR and your house, but the airspace system hosed due to storms along the flight paths.