Flash Flooding and Flight Delays in New Jersey, New York

Little did I know when I booked this trip in February (yes, before all of the insanity surrounding air travel, especially out of Newark) what a chaotic experience my return trip home from the West Coast would be.

Monday's storms and heavy rains caused chaos for many, including those traveling on New York City subways (that video below is insane), and a very stressful travel day for many of us traveling by air.

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The Girls Trip Made It Out Of The Group Chat

The quick back story; a group of Hudson Valley gals, OG Backstreet Boys fans from the 1990s, and a bunch of their #boybands4life friends planned a trip to Vegas for the opening night of Backstreet Boys at Sphere for Millennium 2.0.

Our core group was 9, but many of us had friends, and friends of friends, traveling from all over the states to be there for this nostalgic experience in Vegas, baby. Some in the group very much understood the assignment.

Traveling out late last week was smooth, everyone arrived fairly easily, and the concert (or back-to-back-to-back concerts for some), incredible. The sound in that venue is unmatched and the visuals are extraordinary. (My personal opinion is to sit up top, get the full experience of the space, feel the seat haptics; for reference I was in 405).

SEE ALSO: Remember That Time I Met My Childhood Crush, NKOTB's Joey McIntyre?

Travel Chaos New York/New Jersey Bound

In between concerts, gambling, drinking up and down the strip, and cabana days poolside, we heard that weather on the East Coast was going to be wacky on Monday, when most of us were flying home. My group of five had a 12:00pm direct flight into Newark from LAS, and when we left our hotel, everything was on schedule...

By the time we dropped our baggage though, about 15 minutes later, that schedule changed quite a bit.We heard that Newark was not accepting any incoming flights due to weather, and our flight was delayed about two hours. We made it through security and came up with a game plan to wait a bit, and if we were delayed any further, find a room and stay an extra day.

By the time we got to the gate though, another alert came through saying we were back to our original time and on schedule to land at EWR shortly after 8pm.

It was 108* when we boarded in Vegas, around 11am, an important thing to keep in mind...after we got settled, we found out that we were unable to leave as scheduled due to weather in NJ, and sat on the plane, at the gate, for just under two hours while the sun and 108* temps heated us up.

Once we finally took off from Vegas and connected to in-air wifi, the group chats were full of messages about travel chaos, and a few of those flash flood warnings and state of emergency information for NJ. One group headed towards JFK ended up diverted to Buffalo where they landed and waited for the weather to pass. Another friend flying solo into Newark ended up stranded in Atlantic City late Monday night, as her plane diverted from Newark to AC, deplaned, and were told they would be rescheduled for Tuesday. She was given hotel and transportation vouchers from the airline, but as of this moment (Tuesday 7/15 6:30pm), the airline has yet to 'reschedule' the flight and her husband ended up driving from the Hudson Valley to get her in Atlantic City.

As for us, we ended up making it to Newark a little over two hours later than scheduled, however, once we landed, the Captain informed us that due to the weather and the issues the airport was having earlier in the day, there was no gate for us. That resulted in another 90 minutes or so trapped on the plane just sitting on the tarmac, this time in New Jersey.

In total, we were on the plane for more than eight hours for a 4:24 minute flight...and after a wild long weekend in Vegas, this felt like eternity. We left the hotel in Vegas at 9:30am PST and I stumbled into my house around 2:30am EST.

Was anyone else similarly impacted by the storms and heavy rain on Monday?

In lighter news, check out some other incredible acts that have brought residencies to Sphere Las Vegas: