A transient was behind bars Thursday for allegedly

Holiday travelers in the Midwest and in parts East and South were keeping a leery eye today on a band of foul weather that stretched across the nation's midsection and that was threatening to mess up opening weekend of one of the year's busiest travel periods.Forecasters were predicting a stew of foul weekend weather, from freezing rain then snow in the north to torrential rain in the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and possibly even tornadoes in parts of the South.The worst of the storm wasn't expected to hit Midwest population centers until Saturday, and although few flights had been cancelled as of midday today, the weather was taking a toll on air travel: FlightStats reported more than 1,900 U.S. delays, with the most at Chicago's O'Hare, Denver International, and the three big New York-area airports.The question investors should ask today is whether any of the silk road culture tour in this space trade at reasonable valuations.These are the most widely viewed travel websites on the market today.The foul weather could cause headaches for the estimated 94.5 million Americans planning to travel by road or air during this holiday season, which runs from Saturday through New Year's Day. Concerns were similar to just a month ago, when a winter storm hit just as people were traveling for Thanksgiving.The consumer is opening up his wallet and springing on travel in 2013.Travel, one of the largest travel xinjiang companies, recently reported bookings were up for the summer even at higher sales prices.Tom Griffith, a financial planner from suburban Little Rock, Ark., moved up his departure time for a two-day road trip to Cincinnati so he could get ahead of bad weather.

"The TV said severe weather would impact southeast Arkansas up to Memphis in the afternoon. My plan is to be past Memphis before noon," Griffith said Friday. "I guess my biggest concern would be the wind with the semis on the interstates."Initial worries are mostly in the South and Midwest. Yet while much of the East awoke today to unusually warm weather for this time of year, the region was next in the storm front's crosshairs, creating pre-Christmas travel worries from Chicago and Detroit to Boston and New York.Temperatures that hovered in the 60s in some parts of the Midwest on Thursday plummeted overnight, and freezing rain this morning snarled traffic and forced some school closures in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Transportation said Interstate 90/94 was ice-covered from Tomah and Mauston. The state was bracing for significant snow, sleet and ice.The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch from Arkansas northeastward through parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, with up to 4 inches of rain projected. With falling temperatures, some of that could be freezing rain by Saturday night in the St. Louis area, weather service meteorologist Jon Carney said.Forecasters said thunderstorms would likely develop in the South.