US Holiday Travelers Brace for Foul, Wet Weather Freezing rain. Snow. Thunderstorms. Even tornadoes. Much of the nation braced for foul weather on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, as a wet winter storm created travel worries from Chicago and Detroit to Boston and New York. Forecasters were predicting everything from freezing rain and snow in the north to torrential rain in the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and possibly even tornadoes in the South. The worst of the storm was expected to hit Midwest population centers on Saturday evening, giving some travelers a window at the start of the holiday rush to get through airports and along highways with little disruption. But by late morning, the number of flight cancellations and delays were both creeping up into the low hundreds, most of them at major hub airports, according to aviation tracking website FlightAware.com. It's bad timing for the estimated 94.5 million Americans planning to travel by road or air during this holiday season, which runs from Saturday through New Year's Day, and those hitting the roads for some last-minute shopping. "This is a particularly strong storm with very warm, near record-breaking temperatures in the East and very cold air in the Midwest, and that contrast is the sort of conditions that are favorable for not only winter weather but also tornadoes," said National Weather Service meteorologist Ed Danaher in College Park, Md. The weekend storm was forecast to arch more than 2,000 miles from Texas to northern New England in several bands of weather that, depending on local the temperature, could produce up to 6-12 inches of snow in the northern edge, an icy mix in the middle and soaking rains and thunderstorms in the South. It was already bringing significant ice accumulations to Oklahoma, southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, splitting trees and snapping power lines. That was expected to change over to snow by Saturday night. In the Upper Midwest, forecasters expect 6-8 inches of snow north and west of Chicago and into Wisconsin. Dennis Richmond, 72, was worried about a possible delay to his son's Saturday flight from Washington, D.C., to Madison, Wis., which could get up to 8 inches of snow. Icy weather snarled traffic in Oklahoma on Friday. In Wisconsin and Michigan, slippery roads from freezing rain forced some schools to cancel classes. A woman sleeping in a hotel in Holland in western Michigan was injured when a motorist lost control of his car on an icy street early Friday and slammed into the wall outside her room, MLive.com reported.