Thanksgiving travel is cranking up. Will the weather cooperate?

The Thanksgiving holiday rush neared its full stride at U.S. airports Tuesday, putting travelers’ patience to the test. The TSA expected to screen more than 2.8m people on Tuesday and 2.9m on Wednesday after handling more than 2.5m people on Monday. Things appeared to be going relatively smoothly at most airports, given the big crowds. By early evening Tuesday on the East Coast, only about 70 U.S. flights had been canceled but more than 3,200 had been delayed. Airlines averaged about 4,500 daily flight delays during the previous three days, according to tracking service FlightAware. On the ground, there were a couple slow-speed collisions at Boston Logan International Airport. An American Airlines plane pulling into a gate touched wingtips with a parked Frontier Airlines plane on Monday, but no injuries were reported. On Monday night, a tug towing an empty JetBlue plane struck a Cape Air plane, and two Cape Air pilots were taken to a hospital as a precaution, according to an airport spokesperson. An Arctic blast in the Midwest and wet weather in the Eastern U.S. could disrupt travel over the next several days. A storm system that moved across the West Coast was forecast to bring heavy snow Wednesday to the Intermountain West, including the Rockies in Colorado, the Bitterroot Range in Idaho and Montana, and the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. For Thanksgiving Day, forecasters expect clear weather over the western two-thirds of the country but a mix of rain and snow from Michigan and Ohio through New England.<br/>