Winter storm blasting U.S. East Coast delays, cancels flights at Pearson

Passengers travelling throughTorontoPearson International Airport can expect delays and cancellations Thursday as parts of the U.S. prepare for a "bomb cyclone" bringing up to a foot of snow in some areas.

• Parts of U.S. Southeast hit with most snow in decades

• Sorry, Toronto. Another cold snap is on the way

As of Thursday morning, flightsin and out of U.S. cities impacted by the storm barrelling up the East Coasthave caused approximately 15 per cent of all flightsto be cancelled at Pearson.

In a tweet Wednesday night,LaGuardia Airport in New York reported that more than 90 per cent of its flights had been cancelled for the following day.

Technical difficulties hit U.S. customs

Adding to the chaos was a temporary nationwide outage of U.S. Customs and Border Protection pre-clearance kiosks.

The machines which help speed up the work of customs officers by scanning passports, gathering information and printing out receipts experienced a Canada-wide shutdown, affecting both Terminal 1 and 3 at Pearsonfor a few hours Thursday morning.

BeverlyMacDonald, senior advisor of communications forGTAA,said the outage wasn't "backing up things in Terminal 1 at all," but that there was a longer line up at Terminal 3. She explained that extra staff had been deployed to help alleviate the back up.

Extreme cold weather expected

With temperatures expected to go down to as low as -33 C with the windchill Thursday night, the extreme cold could cause an additional slow down at Pearson. Monday's wintry weathercaused hundreds of delays and cancellationsat the airport.

• 6 signs that this winter's cold has been extreme

MacDonald said cold weather affecting vehicles and equipment, as well as ground crews, has also slowed down operations.

"For [the ground crew's] safety we make sure that in between flights they go inside, so they're not outside for eight hours straight,"MacDonaldtoldCBCToronto. "We want to make sure we're protecting our staff and giving them ample opportunities to warm up."

If anyone has a flight booked through Pearson today,MacDonaldwarns travellers to check ahead and know your flight status before arriving.