CHICOPEE, MA (WGGB/WSHM) -- Some holiday travelers said they almost gave up on their Christmas plans Friday due to dangerous wind and rain conditions that could make driving tricky across western Massachusetts.

Heather Offerman and her passenger, Tony Psero, left Rhode Island Friday morning to head to Indiana for the holidays. Forty-five minutes into their trip, they were ready to call it quits. “We’ve only been on the road for like an hour-and-a-half and we almost turned around because it was so bad, probably the first 45 minutes,” Offerman said at the Ludlow rest area on the Massachusetts Turnpike. “Super windy. People...I felt other people aren’t taking as much precaution as they should, which makes it worse.”

Western Mass News First Alert Meteorologist Jana Brown said a system moving across the region brought record-breaking warmth along with dangerous winds. “We have this pretty vigorous system coming across the area. It’s brought in all this warmth, you know, breaking records, and then we have the wind, which is our biggest concern,” she explained.

Offerman and Psero still have a long way to go before reaching family in Indiana. They planned to stop for the night at a hotel in New York, then get back on the road Saturday morning. Brown added travel conditions will improve over the weekend, but drivers should still exercise caution. “I think traveling tonight, you know, whether you’re heading across the Bay State or North or South, you’re not going to encounter too many issues unless you’re going up into the higher terrain where temperatures are going to drop faster and that could allow things to freeze up quicker,” Brown noted. “So just keep in mind, icy spots will be a concern through tomorrow morning and then conditions will improve over the weekend.”

AAA projects 122.4 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home over the 13-day year-end holiday period beginning Saturday and ending January 1. That represents a 2.2 percent increase over 2024, surpassing last year’s record of 119.7 million travelers. Saturday marks the start of the busiest travel period of the year, according to AAA.

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