Nor’easter Winds Bring a LaGuardia Ground Stop and Cancellations at JFK and Newark on Friday

The FAA put New York’s LaGuardia Airport under a ground stop for wind on Friday morning, November 13, 2026, as a rainy coastal storm that local outlets are calling a nor’easter sat just off Long Island. Flights bound for LaGuardia from much of the Northeast and eastern Canada were held on the ground at their origin airports from 8:28 a.m. EST.

At about 9:15 a.m. the FAA’s Command Center lifted the stop and replaced it with a ground delay program running into the late evening, with average delays of about 90 minutes. JFK, LaGuardia and Newark had all logged cancellations by then.

What the FAA Ordered at LaGuardia

According to the FAA’s ground stop advisory, the stop was set to run from 8:28 to 9:45 a.m. EST and cited “weather / wind.” It covered departures from the Washington, New York, Cleveland and Boston air route traffic control centers, plus Toronto Pearson, Toronto Billy Bishop, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec City and Halifax.

The FAA estimated the stop would add 662 minutes of delay in total, an average of 51 minutes per affected flight and a maximum of 73. It rated the chance of an extension as low, and the stop was canceled about half an hour early.

The ground delay program that replaced it covers LaGuardia arrivals until 10:59 p.m. EST, with an average assigned delay of 90 minutes and a maximum of 137. It applies to flights from across the contiguous US and the same six Canadian airports, at a program rate of 26 arrivals an hour, rising to 36 by the evening.

The airport’s 8:51 a.m. weather observation showed a north wind of 14 knots gusting to 23, with rain. The FAA’s status page listed LaGuardia landing on Runway 4 and departing Runway 31, with an arrival rate of 30 an hour.

Cancellations at JFK, LaGuardia and Newark

FlightAware‘s cancellation tracker at 9:13 a.m. EST showed 55 arrivals and 23 departures canceled at JFK, which sat at the top of its worldwide table on both counts. LaGuardia had 25 arrivals and 18 departures canceled, and Newark 16 arrivals and 6 departures.

Those are small shares of each airport’s day, between 1% and 8% in FlightAware’s figures, but the numbers were still early and climbing. Thursday had already been rough: News 12 Long Island reported around 720 delayed flights out of LaGuardia and JFK that day.

Part of Thursday’s disruption came from thunderstorms, not wind: that evening they put JFK into its own ground delay program, which the FAA canceled at 11:28 p.m.

More restrictions may follow. The FAA’s 8 a.m. operations plan cited rain, low visibility, low ceilings and wind across the New York terminal area and listed a possible ground stop or delay program at Newark from 10 a.m., Philadelphia from noon and JFK from 1 p.m.

Delta has a weather waiver covering Boston, Newark, White Plains, JFK and LaGuardia for travel on November 12 and 13. Customers holding tickets issued by November 12 can move to a flight on or before November 16 without a fare difference in the same cabin.

Why Wind Hits LaGuardia Hardest

A ground stop is the bluntest of the FAA’s traffic management tools: flights for one airport are kept on the ground at their origin rather than sent into holding over New York. A ground delay program is the gentler follow-up, as on Friday, handing each inbound flight a departure slot that matches the number of arrivals the airport can take.

Wind tests LaGuardia’s layout in particular. It has just two runways, 4/22 and 13/31, and they cross, so it cannot spread traffic across parallel runways the way JFK and Newark can.

A gusty north wind lines up neatly with neither runway, and there is no better-aligned runway to switch to. Friday’s program rate of 26 to 36 arrivals an hour is what the FAA expected the airport to handle with the wind, rain and low cloud.

When It Should Ease

The National Weather Service office in New York said in its 6:51 a.m. discussion that low pressure just southeast of Long Island would slowly pull away to the east. It expected light to moderate rain to taper by evening and gusts of mostly 20 to 25 knots at the city’s airports to drop to 5 to 10 knots by sunset.

Forecasters expected flying conditions to improve late in the day and a dry stretch to start over the weekend. The storm also brought a gale warning on the ocean waters and coastal flood advisories for the south shore of Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Passengers flying to or from New York on Friday should check their flight with the airline before leaving for the airport. A canceled flight or a long delay from a ground delay program can ripple into evening connections well beyond the Northeast.