In the main passenger terminal, chaos predominated. Terminal waiting areas were jammed with thousands of passengers from delayed or canceled flights. Baggage, in piles, was everywhere. The vast main concourse had the combined appearance of a football scrimmage and Christmas Eve at Macy's. High on the terminal roof, the airport's immodest slogan, LINCOLN INTERNATIONAL-AVIATION CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD, was entirely obscured by drifting snow. The wonder was, Mel Bakersfeld reflected, that anything was continuing to operate at all. Mel, airport general manager-lean, rangy, and a powerhouse of disciplined energy-was standing by the Snow Control Desk, high in the control tower. He peered out into the darkness. Normally, from this glasswalled room, the entire airport complex-runways, taxi strips, terminals, traffic of the ground and air-was visible like neatly aligned building blocks and models, even at night their shapes and movements well defined by lights. Only one loftier view existed-that of Air Traffic Control which occupied the two floors above. But tonight only a faint blur of a few nearer lights penetrated the almost-opaque curtain of wind-driven snow. Mel suspected this would be a winter to be discussed at meteorologists' conventions for years to come. The present storm had been born five days ago in the lee of the Colorado mountains. At birth it was a tiny low pressure area, no bigger than a foothills homestead, and most forecasters on their air route weather charts had either failed to notice, or ignored it. As if in resentment, the low pressure system thereupon inflated like a giant malignancy and, still growing, swung first southeast, then north.
