While the Memorial Day weather forecast looks sunny and warm, traveling this weekend could be a pretty dark experience, according to airport and driver travel estimates that call for a crush of people traveling in and out of the area.
Nearly 3 million people in Southern California are expected to make a long trip for the Memorial Day Weekend, according to The Automobile Club of Southern California, the highest total of travelers since 2005.
Over 800,000 travelers are expected to arrive and depart from Los Angeles International Airport over the three-day weekend, according to an airport estimate released Thursday. It would be a big jump of 6.7 percent over the same period in 2014.
LAX construction will continue through the week, according to airport officials, leading them to recommend that passengers prepare for extra delays.
"This summer if you're traveling, you're going to be joined by about 24.6 million other passengers," said Mary Grady, an LAX spokeswoman.
Memorial Day marks the beginning of the summer travel season, which runs through Labor Day.
Contributing to the heavier airport traffic this year is increased tourism, larger airplanes accomodating more passengers and more flights on existing and new airline routes, officials said.
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Some travel pain will hit drivers as well, according to data from The Automobile Club of Southern California. There's high gas prices -- which have dipped slightly, but are still 75 cents higher than a month ago -- and a big jump in drivers hitting the road.
Most of the 3 million traveling over the weekend will be driving, according to data released last week by the local AAA chapter. They represent a five percent increase from 2014.
Luckily, gas prices are cheaper than they were a week ago, dropping about two cents on average in Southern California, The Automobile Club of Southern California said Thursday.
But at least one group finds it suspicious that California's gas prices are over a dollar more expensive than the U.S. average.
Consumer Watchdog cited a "suspicious pattern of refinery outages in California" that cost local drivers billions by driving up prices, the organization wrote in a Thursday letter to U.S. attorneys.
