Motorists stranded by storms

Authorities struggled to remove abandoned cars and reopen still-slick highways across the nation’s midsection Friday after a record snowfall buried the region and stranded holiday travelers and shoppers.

Kentucky highways remained hazardous, with temperatures dipping below freezing in many areas, and biting winds creating 5-foot snowdrifts.

A portion of Interstate 64 in Indiana reopened, a day after more than 100 stranded travelers were rescued from their snowbound vehicles. But the road was still treacherous because of hundreds of abandoned vehicles along a 25-mile stretch near the Illinois line.

Some Indiana churches canceled Christmas services to keep people off the road after much of the state was buried in up to 2 feet of snow.

“We were not asking parishioners to be out when police say to stay in,” said the Rev. Dave Ferry, pastor of Englewood Baptist Church in Bedford, Ind.

In Normal, Ill., wind chill readings below zero compelled Epiphany Catholic Church to warm the camel, goats and sheep in its live Nativity scene with king-size electric blankets. The wise men, Mary and Joseph were given battery-powered heaters to carry in their pockets, and Jesus was played by a doll instead of a baby.

“That we wouldn’t want to risk,” Monsignor Eric Powell said.

I-40 reopened in parts of Arkansas, where stranded travelers awoke in shelters.

With frigid temperatures forecast for Ohio, some 275,000 homes and businesses – about half of them in Columbus – remained without power two days after the storm hit, and ice-covered tree branches kept falling onto power lines.

William and Janie Van Winkle had to leave their frigid apartment for a shelter in Newark, Ohio. They didn’t expect to have their power restored until Sunday, and were trying to isolate their 11-month-old son from other children at the shelter because he recently had surgery for a heart condition.

In Chicago, where the temperature was not expected to break 6 degrees and the wind chill was well below zero, sales clerks outnumbered shoppers in Chicago’s Marshall Field’s flagship store on Friday morning.

In Alaska, a different storm stranded motorists for nearly a day on a remote highway blanketed by snow drifts as high as 7 feet. Department of Transportation crews rescued about 30 people Friday on the highway between Delta Junction and Paxson, about 150 miles south of Fairbanks, said a DOT spokeswoman .