When lightning strikes, blizzards blow, and fist-size hail balls rain from the skies, there are certain gateways where flyers should proceed with caution. Many U.S. hubs are vulnerable to excessive delays and cancellations—and sometimes even shutdowns—when wild weather rages. According to Keith Gerr of FlightStats, "What usually happens is that you get a snowball effect, whereby if one of these airports is seeing significant delays due to a weather event, chances are it will impact the delay level of the rest of the major hubs." It's a perfect storm of inconvenience for everyday flyers.

We used weather-caused flight-delay data gathered from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) in combination with local weather history and other sources to find which airports fold under foul weather. See the hubs that made our list of stormy, snowy, delay-prone gateways. (Please note: These slides are in no particular order.)