massive storm strands mom and roy

mom and roy have been driving home from alaska since saturday morning. i was expecting them to arrive last night, but after traveling all that way they ended up stuck in indiana...150 miles from home. they hadn't stopped since monday night except for food and gas. last night around 6pm, mom called and said they were stuck in indiana on I-64 and they hadn't been moving. they were so ready to just be at home and sleep in their own bed and take showers and eat something other than fast food. then at midnight, roy called to say that they still hadn't moved and they called the highway patrol to see what was up and apparently, there was so much snow, semis, snowplows and other large trucks were overturned because they couldn't stay on the road. he told me they had plenty of gas and some snack food in the car and not to worry. my brother said he had seen on the weather channel that they had closed down I-64, but when i watched, i didn't hear anything about it. i didn't sleep well last night and i didn't even end up going to sleep until about 5:30 this morning. around 1pm, mom called and said they had just started moving. i can not even begin to imagine what that had to have been like. stranded in the same place in your car for 19 hours. ugh. needless to say, they're still not home, but i'm expecting them to arrive at any moment. and i'm excited.
our internet has been down since yesterday and it just came back up. the first thing i saw when the yahoo page came up was an article called "Massive Winter Storm Strands Travelers" here's part of it. if you want to read the rest, click here.

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer

EVANSVILLE, Ind. - Frigid temperatures, blasting wind and more snow than some places normally see in a year left parts of the Midwest and South paralyzed Thursday, and transformed a section of highway in southern Indiana into a parking lot.

Southern Indiana barely had time to catch its frosty breath after a snowstorm Wednesday morning when a second, heavier gust pummeled the region, shutting down Interstate 64 eastbound from Evansville to the Illinois State line.


"We're still stuck here. It's been about 13 hours," Ken Sabatini, 52, of Leawood, Kan., said Thursday morning. He, his wife and two children were traveling to Cincinnati for Christmas. "It's cold outside and we're doing our best to stay inside the car."


Temperatures fell to 12 degrees overnight, and Sabatini said some motorists had run out of gas and were sleeping in a stranded Greyhound Bus to stay warm.


"We've got some gas left, so every hour we run it for five minutes to get some warmth in the car," Sabatini said.


The Indiana National Guard was bringing stranded motorists from I-64 to hotels in Evansville or the Red Cross offices.


Gov. Joe Kernan declared a disaster emergency for portions of the state and urged a delay in Christmas travel to allow time for roads to be cleared.


The traffic snarl began when semis had trouble getting up hills and rolled back, blocking traffic, police said. A similar problem tied up traffic on a stretch of Interstate 71 in Kentucky.