MIDWEST SNOWFALL FELT EVEN AT LAX.

Byline: Rachel Uranga Staff Writer

The white Christmas of holiday lore hit the Midwest with a vengeance Thursday, causing grief for thousands of holiday travelers stranded in airports on the eve of Christmas weekend.

The severe winter storms - which dumped more than a year's worth of snow on parts of the Midwest - occurred as a record 62 million people were expected to travel this weekend. The delays caused migraines for travelers at Los Angeles International Airport trying to get home for the holidays, or awaiting the arrival of loved ones.

``It makes you wish you were staying home. I am just so irritated,'' said Terri Lucas, as she sat outside the Northwest Terminal at LAX awaiting a flight to Detroit.

Northwest, Delta and Southwest airlines were among those that reported several delayed flights coming in and out of LAX from the Ohio Valley.

Some delays at LAX lasted up to three hours, while many incoming flights, especially out of the Ohio Valley, were canceled.

``It's frustrating when people are trying to get home for the holidays,'' said Angela Vargo, a spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines. ``But we are working with Mother Nature here.''

No outgoing flights were reported canceled at LAX, although United and Delta Airlines were encouraging customers to switch flight days in affected areas, if possible.

On the road, National Guardsmen rescued more than 100 motorists who had been stranded overnight along a snowy 25-mile stretch of Interstate 64 in southwestern Indiana, and were looking for more people stuck.

``I was scared, wondering about the kids. How was I going to feed them?'' said Mary Craddock, a 28-year-old waitress from Hartford, Ky., who was stranded on the interstate in Evansville, Ind.

Her car was out of gas, and she and her two children had finished their only food - a bag of potato chips - as they waited it out. Temperatures in Evansville dipped into the teens and Wednesday's snowfall of 19.3 inches topped the city's average total winter snowfall of 14.2 inches.

At the height of the holiday travel season, Lucas and hundreds of other travelers waited anxiously while ice melted off airplane wings across the country.

``This is just crazy,'' said Kim Tator, a 45-year-old nurse from Binghamton, N.Y., who hours earlier had been diverted from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., after a snowstorm caused flights in and out of the area to be canceled. She had hoped to be in Honolulu with her husband on their first vacation in nearly 25 years.

``We might not even get on a flight out of here,'' she said.

``And I hate cities,'' her husband chimed in. ``I don't want to stay here.''

The record-breaking snowfall in the Midwest paralyzed the region. Evansville's 19.30 inches was its heaviest snowfall in a single day. The previous 24-hour record was just shy of 11 inches in February 1993.

Paducah, Ky., received 14 inches of snow, eclipsing a record of 11 inches set in January 1978 and topping the yearly average of 10 inches. In some parts of south-central Kentucky, the ice was 2 inches to 4 inches thick.

Flights were delayed or canceled at Ohio's Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati airports as crews struggled to clear runways and deice planes.

AAA is predicting that this will be the busiest holiday travel season ever, in part because Christmas and New Year's Eve fall on weekends this year.

The storm snarled operations at the hubs of operations for the nation's three largest package shippers, throwing holiday gift package deliveries into disarray.

Atlanta-based UPS Inc. said its employees would work through the night Thursday and late today to deliver as many packages as possible before Christmas, while Memphis, Tenn.-based FedEx Corp. urged customers to track their packages on the company's Web site.

DHL, a unit of German postal service Deutsche Post AG, said the weather had delayed many deliveries by a day or two.

Four people were killed in weather-related traffic crashes in Oklahoma, three each in Ohio and Arkansas, and one each in New Mexico, Texas and western New York. A 76-year-old woman in Ohio died of an apparent heart attack while shoveling snow; four people in Michigan died after shoveling snow or digging out.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Rachel Uranga, [phone]

rachel.uranga(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Traffic on Interstate 65 in southern Indiana was at a standstill Thursday after a storm dumped more than 19 inches of snow.

Garry Jones/Associated Press

(2) Passengers wait to check in Thursday at the Southwest Airlines terminal at LAX. Heavy snows in the Midwest caused departure delays of up to three hours at LAX.

Nick Ut/Associated Press

(3) Stalled vehicles and a pedestrian share an interstate highway near Elberfeld, Ind., on Thursday, that was closed to traffic after storms dumped a year's worth of snow in one day.

Daniel R. Patmore/Associated Press