Snow at IAH
 

Snowing in Houston according to the news! Very interesting this time of year. Glad I am home today till the weekend anyway.

Yeah, lucky I'm in HNL.

Although I will be in TX Saturday...:eek:

Is there even de-icing capability at IAH?

It's quite beautiful. In my six years here, it's my first snow (I missed the Christmas snow three? years ago).

I don't think de-icing will be necessary.

I wouldn't want to be there!
 

Snow in Houston. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Good luck.

It was 65 F at EWR today.

3 inches of snow just north of Hosuton(in area of IAH!) amazing!

I am so happy I was not working today out to off times were running three to four hours. Take a look at CDG and LHR, we stayed in a ground stop until about 10:30pm for Continental Flights only due to gate space and taxi times..

If there's frozen precipitation falling, you can be assured they're probably deicing.

It's winter time, so it's OK to get snow now !! :D

We have a few but I have no idea the number. I do remember a few months back seeing about five of them lined up by the hanger.

My flight was deiced at IAH Wed night. Was pretty quick, we took a 20 minute delay. Snow was very light at that point.

Help! Trapped on CO1676
 

Been stuck in the ramp area for 4 hours waiting for deicing --our wings are covered in snow/ice. Pilot said we may be trapped out here for 3+ additional hours; only 1 deicing truck available and it keps running out of fluid/fuel.

IAH-PHL travel time gate to gate is expected to be 10 hours in 737-900 :( heellpppp

I flew in last night on 1711, we were ground stopped in McAllen at first, supposed to be a 3 hour delay, then they lifted it and we left only an hour later then supposed to...

Flying home in the snow was quite cool, the flakes seemed larger than any others I've seen... maybe the flying through it at 500mph made it seem bigger... but it's all good :)

Arriving at the Park n Fly, was funny to see my truck covered in a few inches of snow, see it all the time in other cities, just weird to see snow in your home town :)

Check this out
 

Right Now for
New Orleans, LA

Snow
33°F
Feels Like
24°F
Updated: Dec 11 08:45 a.m. CT

Deicing last night at IAH was a total mess. We were scheduled to depart at 6pm, and were delayed about 2.5 hours. At first, only 1 truck/deice-pad was operating, so planes on that runway got serviced in decent time. But we were waiting at the other runway and the truck didn't show for about 2 hours. :(

All in all, It seems like others fared much worse.

I suppose this isn't required at IAH very often.

I feel sorry for those trapped on 1676. I was trapped on 1776. The big difference - our flight was quite empty and so the atmosphere was much more bearable. I contemplating trying to jump on 1676 but it looked like a total mad house at the gate and decided an empty but later plane would be far more pleasant.

Scheduled Departure: 7:15PM
Scheduled Arrival: 11ish PM
Boarded: 9:15 PM
Pushed Back: 11:30PM?
De-iced and took off at 3:30AM
Landed at 7:20AMish

So time butt was in seat if I have math correctly was just shy of 9 hours.

We had a bit of a party atmosphere in the front of the first class section for the first few hours, but after a few drinks, one of the guys up front started to get a bit grouchy which killed the mood.

Flight crew was fantastic: Did everything in their power to make us comfortable; the pilot kept coming back through the plane and would talk one-on-one with us.

But boy was IAH one big giant ClusterF* last night.

I can't say I am surprised it is exactly what I'd expect when getting such snow at IAH.

Once a decade or so. I'm surprised we've had another snow so soon after the last one (just a few years back over Christmas). Given how rare it is, it probably wouldn't be cost-effective to invest lots of money in de-icing equipment for IAH.

If CO needs heat to melt any ice or snow, have that excellent bartender at the North C-concourse PC make a giant batch on his volcanic Bloody Marys. The heat from one of them would melt 1,000 square miles of yard-deep snow!

My worst night ever of flying in my history with Continental. Sat for 7 hours on plane and was finally cancelled with no help to find a place to sleep!

Full rundown: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....2&postcount=39 :mad:

When I flew into IAH this morning the airport was a mess... Looks like CO had to cancel a bunch of flights yesterday and had crew issues do to late arrivals at the outposts last night.

There were planes parked all over the tarmac, everywhere you could find to stick a plane. Saw everything from ERJ's to 767's sitting around from the mess.

Inside the terminal was worse... oh, I felt bad for people... there were a ton of people sleeping on benches and the floors from what must have been last nights cancelled flights.

I have to give a lot of credit to the Elite desk today as I was scheduled on the 7am today out of MCI but I got a flight notification on my phone at 1:30am saying 1hr 46 delay because of crew (they arrived at MCI 4 hrs late last night). I checked and the 6am was on time but showed only 1 seat left in Worldspan. I called up and the CSR switched me to the 6am flight with no problems... saved my whole day becasue it would have been one misconnect after another if I got into IAH that late.

Wow, didn't realize how lucky I was to get out. Was on the 5:17 departure to BWI--we left about 20 minutes late and made up most of the time... Sorry to hear all the misery here. Of course I may get my comeuppance tomorrow as snow's predicted here in the DC area.

2 flights IAH - CRP didn't make it last night. Xiled due to WX. That was a mess for crp as 2 early am flights had no planes. according to gate agent this morning, she watched the 11p arrival come in as she arrived at works at 3:45a. fortunantly, I was on 10A departure. My friend who was booked on the 8a flight was on my 10a flight because her plane stayed in houston.

We live in Texas because we do not like snow.

My brother was on the last flight out to JAN...I believe he said his flight finally left after 1am. We swapped flight horror stories tonight. I've always been fortunate enough to not be on the plane but instead stuck at the terminal.

I've got a connection through IAH on Fri, and it is forcasted to snow. I can't re-route (going to GUA). Have there been improvements since last year's nightmare with de-icing?

[Being based in DEN where snow is common, I'm affraid of snow in Houston.]

I hear they have the keys to the deicing truck out and ready this year ^

So glad I'm fyling to HNL on Thursday and not Friday :)

Getting back next Tuesday, so I won't have to worry about the back side of the storm either. It'll probably be back to being 65 by then.

They probably wont re-route people until Friday. Perhaps they could route you to LA on UA and then catch CO LAX-HNL-GUA?

I've been in Houston for the last three days, and I haven't seen any snow at all. I also drove out to IAH at noon today, no sign of snow, it's just a cold crisp day.

Snow doesn't happen like that in Houston, or most of Texas for that matter. It is forecast to occur Friday, which means that it likely will not happen and if it does, it will be light.

Or it will be apocalyptic. Time will tell. :-:

It is forecast to occur Friday, which means that it likely will not happen and if it does, it will be light.
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Earlier in the thread there are people saying that they have 3 inches of snow in Houston. I can't see any sign of any

Right, check the date on those posts. They're talking about the storm from 2008. ;)

Check the dates on the postings... (beat me to it!)

Will Customer Al Gore, please pick up the white courtesy phone.
 

Can't beat that global warming. Tell Exxon in Baytown to turn the refinery onto HIGH.

- HF

HobokenFlyer: That's an excellent di-icing solution, make a low flyby of a flare tower... :)

Airframe corrosion is a nasty side effect of that deicing method. :o

From what I've read on Weather Underground (from folks more knowledgeable than I about weather matters), both the NAM and GFS models indicate heavier precip on the North side of Houston (primarily on the NW Side). Apparently, that would be indicative of significant accumulations (an inch or so). If it happens, that's the sort of snow event that hits Houston once every 30 or so years (I haven't seen an inch or so accumulate near the airport since the 80s). The Christmas Eve snow of 2005 and last year's Snow barely dusted the North Side. It was areas around Sugarland and Baytown that got dumped on for those.

From what I've read, there's supposed to be an upper-level low approaching S.E. Texas on Friday morning, and the precip associated with it will be riding through a solid column of cold arctic air that the frontal boundary currently over North Texas is dragging into the state. Thankfully, the solid column of cold air will likely mean that there won't be much in the way of ice/sleet.

Not unheard of for a low near the moisture-rich Gulf and a blanket of arctic air to create impressive snowfall totals along the Texas coast. A similar set-up in 2005 resulted in areas around Victoria (closer to Corpus Christi than Houston) receiving about 14" of snow. IIRC, it topped their all-time one-day snowfall totals by about a foot. When I was in Corpus Christi for the August Baseball DO, there were shops selling postcards showing the Palm-lined shore of the bay buried under about 3" of snow. :eek:

Still 48 hours out, so definite forecasts are too hard to pin down at the moment, but there's definitely some support in the models for a decent amount of snow on the North side of town.

Latest NWS Discussion:

Aye, I agree with you (and the NWS folks) but allow me to interject these ideas: NWS forecast for SAT/AUS/DRT include snow over the Hill Country and some decent chance here in AUS on Friday morning. It is scheduled to taper off as the day progresses, which means I don't think IAH will see as much.

But also, I am a nerd who enjoys weather and by no means an expert at reading GFS or NAM. It'll be interesting either way.