"Traverse City, canceled. Waterloo, Iowa, canceled. Springfield, canceled. Rhinelander, canceled. Lansing, Mich., canceled. Iron Mountain, canceled."

A similar sense of resignation settles over the passengers. A middle-school teacher waiting for her daughter, who is stranded in Indianapolis, grades papers at a folding table. One passenger pulls out his guitar and begins practicing Christmas carols.

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," he sings quietly, as the people around him stare listlessly into the distance. "Jack Frost nipping at your nose. ..."

Out of the acres of exhaustion, a few tempers still flare. A gate agent braces for an onslaught of passengers from Providence, who, if and when they arrive, will learn their connections have been canceled.

"Scream to your heart's content," she says, almost as if she is rehearsing her response. "I know you're screaming about American Airlines. There's not a damn thing I can do about it."

A man paces in Terminal 2. "I don't carry a gun, but if I did I would've shot somebody by now," he shouts. A few people steal glances at him before taking a step away.

"It was an hour-and-a-half thunderstorm," he bellows. "For an hour-and-a-half thunderstorm, why should I spend the night in Chicago?"

It's not just the first thunderstorm that's keeping him in Chicago; it's the one that hasn't arrived yet. Bad weather now rings the airport, squeezing it shut. From 9 to 10 p.m., only 19 planes will leave O'Hare.

Strangely enough, the passengers who know they're spending the night in Chicago are fortunate. They can at least try to find a hotel room. The dozens of others who sit patiently, watching their flights get pushed back from 6:15 to 8 to 9:30 to 11:20 before they are canceled are the ones who will find themselves out of luck.

Betsy Moghadam sits at Gate C25, her burgundy shirt stained with Italian salad dressing and dribbles of breast milk. After 16 hours at O'Hare, she has run out of diapers and is using airport-issued one-size-fits-all extras that don't fit her 2-year-old daughter or her 4-month-old son.

Nearby, three United flight attendants, waiting for five hours for their own flight to Denver, trade war stories. Suddenly, one of them, Maureen Donoher, a tall woman with short, brown hair and big, gold earrings, looks up and sees Moghadam.

What a nightmare this must be for her, she thinks.

She walks over.

Can I lend a hand? she asks.

The flight attendant scoops Mark into her arms.

Moghadam watches, smiling wearily.

For the first time since she arrived at the airport, the 37-year-old mother feels that someone with the airline cares about her plight. But it is not enough to alleviate the mounting tension she feels.

Macey starts to roll around on the dirty floor. There's only so much waiting a toddler can stand. Is the plane really going to leave? Is she going to have to spend the night?

"I'm not flying United anymore, I'll tell you that," she says to no one in particular.

Donoher knows that, despite the announcements that flights will resume soon, the chances of Moghadam getting to Buffalo tonight are slim. She walks behind the counter to talk with the gate agent. She knows that the airline generally doesn't offer free accommodations to passengers stranded by weather, but tonight, she thinks, isn't a night for corporate policy.

Airlines use a caste system that largely functions according to economics: The passengers who pay the most get the best treatment. After all, a last-minute, first-class ticket to Tokyo can cost as much as $11,000, and the airlines want to keep the executives who pay those fares as happy as they can.

Tonight, some people on canceled flights will receive vouchers worth $300 while others just get food coupons that will buy a couple of hamburgers. Members of the airlines' private clubs will have employees at their disposal to rebook canceled flights while coach-class passengers stand in lines that stretch the length of several gates. Betsy Moghadam now has her own advocate.

We have to get this woman a hotel room, Donoher tells the gate agent. The agent tells her all the hotels near the airport are full. Let's keep looking, Donoher answers.

A few feet away, another passenger, Duane Stewart, leans against the wall. He had promised his two daughters he would be home in time to tuck them in bed. Now, he calls on his cellular phone to say good night.

Like everyone else, he is tired and angry. He looks at the commotion surrounding Moghadam, at the crayons and toys strewn around the floor at her feet. He takes a long, heavy breath.

"My problems are small," he says.

Outside the windows of the O'Hare control tower, the blinking lights of the idled planes flash like giant fireflies.

Word comes that one of them, a Tokyo-bound Japan Airlines 747, is willing to become a pathfinder to see if there's a way to steer around the approaching storm. If a pathfinder can thread a new route, perhaps other planes will be able to follow.

The controllers, who mostly sit idle now, watch as the plane, so large that it seems to hang still in the air, takes off.

Someone picks up a pair of binoculars and passes them around. They watch until it disappears from sight; then they turn to the green glow of the radar screens.

They see the blinking dot surge north, but then dodge northeast, seeking a path through calm air. Then west, southwest, northwest, making an "S" on the screen.

Then, it's out of view, on its way to Japan.

Not much later, the storm arrives and slams shut the door behind it. Like a massive, twisting snake, the squalls stretch from Muskegon, Mich., to Topeka, Kan., and top out at 50,000 feet above the ground.

At 9:22 p.m. the FAA calls another nationwide ground stop to O'Hare. Thirty minutes later, the second storm of the day sits right on top of O'Hare. More than three dozen bolts of lightning strike the airfield within a matter of six minutes.

The flashes outside the terminal windows dash any slim hopes passengers had of leaving.

One man makes his way to the front of a line to rebook a flight for the early morning. The gate agent tells him there are no hotel rooms to be found.

"Where am I supposed to spend the night?" he asks.

"Camp O'Hare," the airline employee responds.

Around him, the airport has transformed itself.

The luckier passengers are lined up on city-issued, drab-green cots set up in lines like an Army barracks.

While the makeshift dormitories doze beneath dimmed lights, other passengers curl up wherever they can. One man sleeps on four chairs he has lined up in front of a Starbucks stand; others are crammed under the escalators, on baggage carousels and beneath banks of pay phones.

Even the Chicago Children Museum's "Kids on the Fly" playground is serving as a hotel tonight. Eric Oveson, a welder from Duluth, Minn., has settled down with his family near the Cargo Treasure Hunt, a series of large, wooden boxes designed to teach children about the "unusual and fascinating stuff that travels to O'Hare daily."

Tonight, the cargo is the Oveson family, who have converted the play equipment into a temporary home. Eric has laid down a blanket on the spongy rubber floor, while his wife, Cammy, sleeps next to him. In one of the boxes, their 8-month-old son, Riley, rests, seemingly oblivious to the unusual surroundings. Three-year-old Clayton rustles beside him.

"Some cleaning guy came by and told us we need to leave, they've got to clean this place," Eric Oveson says. "I said no."

Other people have laid claim to the inside of the Fantasy Helicopter, the top of the Air Traffic Control Tower and the Luggage Station. Inside the purple fiberglass Cargo Plane, Tom and Lisa Firsching are trying to sleep in the cockpit. To fit inside the child-size area, Lisa curls slightly on her side, while Tom lies on his back, his feet up on the instrument panel.

"This is nothing," he says, pointing to the more spacious "cargo" area of the plane behind him, where another passenger sleeps. "The guy in first class back there has it good."

Even luckier is Betsy Moghadam, who, thanks to the flight attendant's intervention, is on her way to a corner suite at the Swissotel downtown.

She and her children don't have clean clothes, pajamas or toothbrushes, but they will have somewhere to sleep. And sleep is what Moghadam does, after consuming a room-service pizza and half a beer ($28 on her own tab). She is too tired to take a shower.

At the airport, someone—maybe some punchy airline workers, maybe some mischievous kids—has commandeered the public address system in Terminal 1.

"Good night," a voice booms.

Then, a few moments later, "Waassuup!"

The crowd outside the McDonald's on the B Concourse is hungry and restless. It's 20 minutes past the 11 p.m. closing time, but two dozen people are still waiting in line, and they do not greet news of the restaurant's impending shutdown well.

Most of the airport's restaurants and food stands already have closed for the night, leaving many of the 5,800 people stranded overnight holding food vouchers that are virtually worthless until the morning.

"It was a terrible day," exclaims one passenger. "I come here and I can't even get a flipping hamburger!"

Anthony Cole, the restaurant's 24-year-old manager, sympathizes with the travelers, but it has been a long day for his employees too. Some are students who must get up early for classes tomorrow. Others, like Cole, who lives on the South Side, face long commutes home on public transportation. And he knows that if he stays open to serve the people who wait, still more will join the line and the restaurant will never close.

"I don't have any more burgers," he tells the customers.

He tries to direct the customers to the C Concourse, where he thinks another McDonald's may still be open.

He points to the escalators that take people there. But they won't leave.

Finally, he gives up. He scoops up the leftover Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets and double cheeseburgers destined for the trash and throws them on the counter.

The people in line pounce on the food.

Next come the french fries, which are snatched up just as fast, some by people who have already grabbed sandwiches. There is no sharing, no attempt to distribute the food fairly. The people at the back are left empty-handed and they wander off, disconsolately, in hopes of finding food elsewhere.

The restaurant's security gate is half-shut when Bess Urban wanders up. She and three others are trying to get from Denver to Manchester, N.H. When she hears the restaurant is closed, she is crushed.

Her friend, Margot Johnston, repeatedly asks if there is something—anything—to eat or drink.

Cole, his shirt hanging out, scoops up the last fries from a bin. He hands them to another employee, Sammie King, who passes the fries to Urban.

She looks as though she might cry.

"You are such an angel," she says.

On through the night, through the periodic flashes of lightning, through the cleaning crews carefully maneuvering their brooms around the people sleeping on the ground, passengers continue to straggle in and out of the airport.

The last departure of the night, a United flight to Baltimore, takes off just after 3 a.m., about 45 minutes after the pilot and crew arrive at the gate to the cheers and claps of those waiting at the gate. One passenger carries his sleeping daughter in his arms. A bus full of American Airlines passengers arrives about the same time from Des Moines.

All in all, United and American, which account for 83 percent of the traffic at O'Hare, each will cancel about 40 percent of their flights there on Sept. 11. Midway's dominant carrier, Southwest, cancels or eliminates the Chicago portion of 23 out of 242 flights, or just 9 percent.

Late into the night, one plane still soars through the air, making its way to O'Hare.

The final arrival of Monday night pulls into Gate B3 at 4:33 a.m. Tuesday, more than five hours late because it was diverted to Tennessee on its way from Washington, D.C., to Chicago.

Ground crews rush out to meet the plane and unload the baggage, but there are no United Airlines employees at the gate to connect the walkway to the plane's door.

So it sits there.

In the waiting area, a man in a suit is sacked out on three airline pillows next to a sign that gives the acceptable dimensions for carry-on luggage. A few feet away, two young backpackers have unrolled their sleeping bags and are dozing despite the drone of a CNN broadcaster's voice from an overhead television.

The whine of the plane rouses a gray-haired couple, who fold up their airplane blankets, pack up their belongings and move on. But there is still no sign of a United Airlines employee.

By 4:45 the baggage has been unloaded. The pilots peer out the cockpit window. Still nothing.

Three minutes later, a United employee walks to the gate, picking up his pace when he sees the plane outside. After gaining access to the walkway, he slowly maneuvers the accordion-like end of the ramp to the plane.

More than 20 minutes after the plane pulls up, the walkway is connected and the passengers unload.

They trickle out, faces drawn and shoulders sagging beneath the weight of their bags, picking their way past a man asleep on the floor, huddled beneath the jacket of his suit.

After a brief respite as uneasy and restless as the dozing of the passengers on the phalanxes of creaking cots, O'Hare slowly comes back to life.

Men push carts full of bundled newspapers through the crowded concourses. Workers stack up the cots. Dazed travelers stir under blankets as jazz music begins to blare from the loudspeakers.

A line forms behind the six men standing at the sinks inside the men's restroom near Gate C24.

One brushes his teeth. Another attempts to shave, even though the motion-detector sink keeps shutting off the water. Others wash their faces, trying to rinse away the night's grime.

The two trash cans are nearly full. The two paper towel dispensers are empty.

"No paper towels?" one man asks in disgust, wringing the water off his hands, his face still dripping.

"By 5 o'clock, you think they could have at least got us some paper towels."

He shakes his hands and walks out of the bathroom, past a sign that says: "How are our restrooms? Please call ..." Lines start to build at the gates too.

Among those waiting for United Airlines' first flight to Los Angeles is a massive, olive-skinned man in a T-shirt and shorts, with a carved pendant hanging from his neck.

James Marcum is trying to get home to New Zealand for his father's funeral. Marcum, 31, is Maori, descended from the country's indigenous population. With his father's death, he has become the leader of his family. To conduct the traditional funeral without him would be nearly unthinkable.

Due to the time it takes to get to New Zealand, it is impossible for Marcum to arrive before the last of the four nights of mourning that must precede the burial. Now, even that is in doubt.

"I tried to ring home," he says. "I said, 'Leave the lid of the coffin off. I'm trying to get there as fast as I can.'"

Marcum, a butcher at a Piggly Wiggly store near Racine, Wis., was supposed to take an 8:30 p.m. flight Monday, but it was canceled and he spent the night sleeping on a row of seats.

Now, his eyes, ringed in red, speak of the combined toll of grief, exhaustion and worry. He hopes to make it to Los Angeles in time for an 11 p.m. flight to New Zealand, but his confidence in United is shattered.

"I couldn't take it," he says of Monday night, his voice calm. "We're looking out there and there's no plane there, but the [monitor] is showing that it's all on time."

At 6:10 a.m., Marcum makes it onto the flight to Los Angeles. As the agent hands him the boarding pass, he says, "Thanks for being patient."

When he gets to New Zealand, the Pacific Islander will have three hours to mourn before his father's coffin is closed and he is buried.