Thanksgiving travelers face crowded planes, cheap gas: Snow looms in forecast; fewer trips predicted

David Patch

Nov. 25, 2008 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Carol and Bill Melvin made their Thanksgiving week getaway from Toledo just in time to avoid sloppy, winter-like weather overnight and today.

The Perrysburg couple boarded a flight yesterday morning at Toledo Express Airport for a trip to Memphis, where a daughter and grandchildren live.

"Yes, it's supposed to snow and ice and whatever," Mrs. Melvin said. "But it gets cold in Memphis too. It's family. It doesn't matter what the weather is."

The Melvins join slightly more than 4.5 million United States travelers who AAA expects will fly for Thanksgiving trips this year.

That's a 7.2 percent decline in predicted holiday air travel compared with last year, the auto club reported, and part of an overall 1.4 percent decline in Thanksgiving trips by all modes of transportation.

The National Weather Service in Cleveland expected Toledo to get a half-inch of snow overnight and perhaps as much as two inches this afternoon from snow showers on the back side of a weak storm that passed through the Great Lakes region yesterday.

Travel was likely to be more difficult today in the Lake Erie snow belt of northeast Ohio, where 6 to 12 inches of snow are possible today, and in the western Pennsylvania mountains, where forecasters said up to 8 inches could fall, starting today.

The 33.2 million Americans traveling more than 50 miles from home by private auto will pay the lowest Thanksgiving fuel prices since 2004.

Just a week ago, gasoline prices in the low $1.70s per gallon for self-service, unleaded regular were the lowest in town, but yesterday such prices seemed high compared to the $1.60s that were common in much of Toledo and the mid-$1.50s offered by truck stops in Lake Township near

I-280 and the Ohio Turnpike.

Yesterday the Web site toledogasprices.com reported a local average price of $1.686 per gallon for regular. That marked its lowest local average since January, 2005, and was down more than 15 cents per gallon in just one week.

A year ago, regular gasoline averaged $3.079 per gallon in Toledo.

Toledoans currently enjoy gasoline prices that are 22 1/2 cents below the national average, according to the Web site.

Deborah Anderson, a Toledoan who has temporarily moved to Dayton while her daughter goes to college there, said cheaper gasoline enabled them to drive back north on I-75 yesterday to spend Thanksgiving with the rest of their family.

"If it hadn't changed, I wouldn't have made it," Ms. Anderson said after filling up on $1.589-per-gallon regular at a Clark station on Monroe Street near I-475 in West Toledo.

Tom Kloza, the chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J., said sharply falling gasoline prices are hardly worthy of celebration in the context of the economic slump that precipitated them, but predicted cheaper gas will stick around until at least mid-February.

In the short term, he said, prices "will stay right where they are, maybe a little higher," then perhaps falter again in January, which is typically "an awful month for gasoline demand.

"It's premature to say we've seen the lows of the winter," Mr. Kloza said.

Over the longer term, the analyst predicted no return to $4 per gallon gasoline next summer, but "I wouldn't make that same bet for 2010."

The key word to describe oil markets and gasoline prices for the foreseeable future, he said, is "action" -- they'll be volatile.

Travelers planning to fly but not yet holding tickets may, as usual, have trouble finding seats -- especially tomorrow because Thanksgiving Eve is typically the busiest travel day of the year in the United States.

Airline load factors are "pretty robust," said Carla Firestone, a spokesman for the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority. "They're going to be pretty busy the next couple of days."

But except in metropolitan Detroit, road construction should not be a significant factor for highway travelers in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. I-75 remains closed for reconstruction in south Detroit, and is reduced to one lane northbound in southern Wayne County.

Contact David Patch at:

dpatch@theblade.com

or 419-724-6094.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0203-29874487