By Shelley Kofler, KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – Winter weather may dampen the record-breaking hopes for Super Bowl 45. Marketing studies have predicted an economic impact of $611 million, the most ever for the NFL's championship game.
Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert says the weather's impact won't be known for some time, but clearly it's having an effect.
Mayor Leppert: This does impact clearly with the weather you can't get around to get to the restaurants and shopping that we had hoped was the case. And we do have some challenges trying to get people into town. So I think everyone is feeling good about the controllable aspects of what the host committee did, but the weather does affect it.
The weather has also delayed air travel from the Milwaukee and Pittsburg areas. But DFW and Love both expect flights carrying Packer and Steeler fans to be able to land later today.
Snowy Dallas Love Field reopens to private planes
Snow-covered Dallas Love Field has reopened to some private planes but remains closed to commercial airline flights.
City aviation spokesman Jose Luis Torres says Love Field reopened to limited outbound general aviation flights around 10 a.m. Friday, seven hours after the airport closed due to weather. Torres says several private planes were allowed to take off, but no flights were landing.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines remained grounded at its Love Field home.
Torres says commercial aviation has different minimum standards that must be met when it comes to weather. He says Love Field was expected to open to commercial airline traffic sometime Friday afternoon.
DFW Airport Ready for Super Bowl Arrivals
The four major runways at DFW Airport are open and ready for Super Bowl arrivals.
The airport's David Magana says original projections put DFW passenger traffic at 190 thousand today. 160 thousand is a normal day. But, that estimate was before the winter storm and today's snowfall.
Magana: The airlines have had to cancel about 300 departures today because of de-icing operations. You can't run a full schedule when you're de-icing. So they've had to do that. But the capacity is there. Any aircraft that can lift off from its departure city, we've got room for it to land here.
Magana says of the average 150 thousand people who travel to a Super Bowl game, 100 thousand "fly."
More snow hits Texas just days before Super Bowl
Another blast of winter has slammed Texas, with several inches of snow making driving hazardous and prompting the cancellation of flights at its main airports just two days before the Super Bowl.
North Texas is still trying to recover from Tuesday's ice storm, part of a massive system that brought tremendous snow and bone-chilling temperatures to a large swath of the country this week.
A winter storm warning is in effect for Arlington, where the Steelers and the Packers will play in Cowboys Stadium with the retractable roof closed.
Key indicators for Texas children moving down
Teen pregnancies and the number of kids living in poverty are rising as Texas lawmakers cut spending for children, the annual State of Texas Children 2011 report says.
The study says the number of children in Texas has risen 11 percent since 2000, but the number living in poverty is up 17 percent. That's almost one quarter of all the children in Texas. The Center for Public Policy Priorities compiled the report from state and federal data. The non-partisan group advocates for children and the poor.
The number of pregnancies among unmarried teens rose 7 percent to more than 44,000. The infant mortality rate is also up 10 percent since 2000.
In the draft budget, lawmakers would cut state spending for children by 13 percent.