Sun Oct 23 & Mon Oct 24 Outlook

Coastal low tracks north along Eastern Seaboard; deicing possible for DEN in wake of front that goes on to produce rain, thunderstorms for ORD and DFW

Welcome to any new readers! And as a reminder to long-ish time readers, we’re testing a new format for these outlooks. To both old and new—we’re grateful you’re here.

If you have questions about the content of this outlook, the answers might be in this post (we keep adding to it). Otherwise, let us know if something doesn’t make sense (we welcome feedback of all kinds!).

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And we’re back!

After one wedding-induced layoff (not mine—slide into the comments, ladies) and another National Blend of Models-induced layoff, we’re finding our routine again. Thankfully, we missed some relatively quiet days. Core 30 airports¹ dodged EDCTs entirely on Thursday and Friday; and only 0.6% of core 30 arrivals were assigned an EDCT on the 16th and 17th, a two-day incidence that’s in the lowest quintile year-to-date.

Perhaps more notable was TSA throughput in our absence, which set a new recovery high-water mark on Sunday, the 16th. 2.495 million travelers went through TSA checkpoints, surpassing the 2.491 million screened on July 1, 2022. It’s an impressive bounce from an Ian-related slump—depending on what weekday mapping you subscribe to, the equivalent Sunday in 2019 was 7-9% off the summer peak.

Let’s get to our regularly scheduled programming.

Sunday, October 23

We forecast TSA will screen 2.492 million travelers (± 0.5σ, or a prediction interval of about 38%, is 2.43-2.55 million travelers).

Models are coming into better agreement around the coastal low developing abeam Georgia; to wit, a weaker and more offshore solution. Nonetheless, a batch of rain should overspread the Mid-Atlantic Sunday, with a later onset (early afternoon) and slightly better chances for NYC.

A strong system headlined by heavy mountain snow may deliver impacts to DEN in the form of gusty west winds.

Monday, October 24

We forecast TSA will screen 2.379 million travelers (± 0.5σ, or a prediction interval of about 38%, is 2.32-2.44 million travelers).

Measurable snow is unlikely for DEN associated with this system, though mixed precipitation could result in some deicing² delays Monday morning. We’ll take the opportunity to plug our winter operations explainer.

The low associated with this system lifts into the Northern Great Plains on Monday while its cold front pushes through the Southern Plains and Middle Mississippi Valley. Unseasonably warm air around ORD will support the development of showers and possibly a few thunderstorms through the morning. The highest chances for rain looks to be later in the day around DFW, with a few strong to marginally severe storms possible during the evening.

You can check out³ hourly estimates in this workbook.

1. ATL, BOS, BWI, CLT, DCA, DEN, DFW, DTW, EWR, FLL, HNL, IAD, IAH, JFK, LAS, LAX, LGA, MCO, MDW, MEM, MIA, MSP, ORD, PHL, PHX, SAN, SEA, SFO, SLC, TPA

2. Still using those DALL-E credits. The prompt for this one was, “deicing at denver airport during sunrise, mountains in background, in the style of female indie-pop album cover.”

A Jack Antonoff-produce Taylor Swift album? We couldn’t help ourselves. Unfortunately, DALL-E isn’t similarly inclined and specifying Taylor Swift violates their content policy...

3. While it links to a Google Sheet, it’s an Excel file and relies on the XLOOKUP function, which does not exist in Sheets. You can download the file and open in Excel, which should resolve the #NAME? error; if any readers don’t have Excel, let us know and we can work on a solution.