Flight Disruptions Now

July 18, 2026

Atlanta and Boston joined the ground-stop wall tonight as the second storm wave hit thirteen airports, with Teterboro departures past six hours

Subscribe
Get every issue
EmailIn your inboxPodcastAny playerRSSAny reader
Listen

The second wave the NWS peak-window forecast called for has fired across a broader footprint than the morning wall. As of 7:26 PM ET, thirteen airports from Atlanta to Boston are in thunderstorm ground stops ending between 7:30 and 8:30 PM, Teterboro departures are averaging over six hours, White Plains is over four, and the tornado watch runs until 9 PM across New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

The second wave is live and it is bigger than the morning

The morning's twelve-airport ground-stop wall had largely expired and shifted to ground-delay programs by mid-afternoon, exactly as the last issue described. Then the peak-window storms arrived and the ground stops came back, and they stretched further than the first round.

As of 7:26 PM ET, the FAA's NASSTATUS feed (via flightcheck.live) shows thunderstorm ground stops at thirteen airports:

Chicago O'Hare is separately in a ground-delay program averaging 3 hours 12 minutes for non-weather reasons.

The headline change since the last issue is the footprint. The morning wall was a Northeast event. The second wave pulled in Atlanta, the world's busiest hub and the center of Delta's network, plus Boston and Hartford. The regional New York airports are getting hammered hardest on departure delays: Teterboro at over six hours and White Plains at over four are the kind of numbers that mean connections are gone and crews are timing out.

FlightAware is tracking roughly 1,100 cancellations and 4,900 delays across the U.S. today, with LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark carrying the heaviest cancellation counts and Atlanta and Newark leading on delays. Delta and its regional partner Republic are taking the largest share of cancellations, which tracks with Atlanta and the New York metros both being in the wall at once.

The cause: a cold front, a tornado watch, and wildfire smoke colliding

The mechanism is a strong cold front pushing through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, firing rounds of severe thunderstorms along the I-95 corridor from Georgia to New England. The NWS Storm Prediction Center kept the region at an Enhanced Risk, level 3 of 5, for damaging winds, large hail, flash flooding, and tornadoes.

A tornado watch remains in effect until 9 PM EDT for New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Maryland, with the NWS warning that the tornado risk is "notably high" and a stronger tornado, potentially as strong as EF2, is possible. Severe thunderstorm warnings were active across Delaware, Maryland, and southern New Jersey as of 5:14 PM, with 60 mph wind gusts reported.

A second factor is compounding the Northeast delays: Canadian wildfire smoke. This is the fifth consecutive day thick smoke has sat over the Mid-Atlantic corridor, keeping air quality at Code Red or worse across DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. Philadelphia was under a smoke-driven ground-delay program on Friday that averaged 67 minutes, and the reduced visibility is still a constraint as the storms move through. The cold front should clear the smoke tonight, but forecasters warn a third wave of smoke could return as soon as Sunday.

How long and what comes next

The ground stops are short-duration by design. They expire in waves: PHL at 7:30 PM, then BOS, BDL, BWI, and DCA at 8:00 PM, then JFK, EWR, LGA, TEB, ATL, HPN, MMU, and CDW at 8:30 PM. The tornado watch lifts at 9 PM. As the cold front pushes offshore through the evening, the convective trigger fade and the ground-stop wall should give way to residual ground-delay programs working through the backlog.

The downstream problem is Atlanta. When ATL goes into a ground stop, the ripple hits Delta's entire network, because every Delta bank through the hub stacks up and aircraft and crews fall out of position for the rest of the night and into tomorrow morning. Expect residual delays and cancellations into Sunday morning even after the storms clear, particularly on Delta and its regional affiliates. The New York metros will be working through backlogs too, but their recovery is more contained.

Sunday should be calmer on the convective front, with the cold front offshore and high pressure building in. The risk to watch is the third smoke wave pushing back into the Northeast Sunday evening, which could bring visibility-driven ground-delay programs back to PHL and the New York metros even without thunderstorms.

Rebooking

Delta has an active travel exception policy for the New York thunderstorms, covering tickets issued on or before July 16 for travel July 16 through 18 to, from, or through Newark, JFK, LaGuardia, and White Plains. Rebooked travel must originate on or before July 21. If your Delta flight was cancelled and no alternative works, you can request a refund through Delta's travel alerts page.

No other major carrier has posted a new waiver specific to today's storms as of this writing. American, United, and JetBlue's earlier July severe-weather waivers have expired. If you are flying through any of the thirteen ground-stop airports tonight or tomorrow morning, check your airline's travel-alerts page directly before heading to the airport, and watch for new waivers to post as the disruption firms up. The FAA NAS Status page and flightcheck.live are the best real-time checks for whether your airport's ground stop has lifted.