Best, Worst Times For Thanksgiving Travel In New Jersey

NEW JERSEY — In New Jersey, 1.4 million people will be hitting the road for the Thanksgiving holiday this year, heading out on a road trip to celebrate with their families.

AAA is predicting a 3 percent increase in travel over 2018 for the Thanksgiving travel period (Wednesday, Nov. 27, through Sunday, Dec. 1). That's the highest volume of travel for the holiday since 2005.

It also means that the highways and roads in New Jersey are going to get jammed with traffic.

The same question seems to emerge every year: When is the best time to hit the roads in New Jersey to avoid the Thanksgiving traffic?

The answer is now available, thanks to Google Maps. Google has identified the best and worst times by city for Thanksgiving travel.

According to that tool, here are the best and worst times for holiday travel in New Jersey (specifically, the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan regions):

• Best Time To Leave Before Thanksgiving: 2 a.m. Wednesday
• Worst Time To Leave Before Thanksgiving: 3 p.m.
• Best Time To Leave After Thanksgiving: 3 a.m. Friday
• Worst Time To Leave After Thanksgiving: 3 p.m. Friday

Google Maps also used aggregated and anonymized popular time data during the Thanksgiving week to identify when crowds tend to be the largest at popular holiday venues.

Bakeries, grocery stores and liquor stores all hit peak crowd levels between noon and midnight on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Movie theaters and shopping centers, though, have the most activity between noon and midnight on Black Friday.

To determine the best and worst times to drive on Thanksgiving, Google Maps analyzed data from the 2018 “Thanksgiving Holiday Period,” which included the Wednesday before Thanksgiving until the end of Sunday after the holiday.

The web mapping service found the volume of cars on the road at a given time during this period, and received the traffic information anonymously from Android users in 25 cities throughout the United States.

Now, if you're taking a plane instead of driving you may encounter delays there, too, thanks to storms across the country.

Millions of Thanksgiving travelers on Tuesday were hung up at airports after their flights were canceled as the first of two storm systems continued to move through the Rockies, Great Plains and Great Lakes.

Denver International Airport, a major hub, canceled more than 450 flights Tuesday morning, and that could affect travel to and from Philadelphia.

Flightaware.com reports there are already 12 delayed flights for Wednesday. The Flightaware.com Misery Map shows what to expect across the country.

The storms will potentially affect travel through the weekend, which could cause a nightmare for holiday travelers. A record 4.5 million of Americans planned to fly to their Thanksgiving destinations, according to the AAA travel group.

The National Weather Service called the second storm "historic" and "unprecedented" for southwest Oregon and northwest California, where it will bring areas of damaging winds, heavy mountain snow and heavy rain to the West Coast Tuesday through Thanksgiving Day.

Parts of Colorado had received more than a foot of snow by daybreak Tuesday, with more expected to fall in blizzard conditions. Some areas could see near-record snowfall. The National Weather Service in Boulder, Colorado, "strongly discouraged" travel Tuesday. The storm had already closed several roads, including Interstates 76 and 70 across the Plains.