A sloppy storm dumped more than a year’s worth of snow on parts of the Midwest and made a mess of holiday travel and last-minute Christmas shopping Thursday. More than a dozen traffic deaths were blamed on the storm.

The heavy snowfall and icy roads stranded motorists, delayed flights ahead of a holiday weekend in which a record 62 million were expected to travel and threw gift package deliveries into disarray for the nation’s three largest package shippers.

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.

Paducah, Ky., received 14 inches of snow, topping the yearly average of 10 inches and doubling its previous one-day record.

“This is a storm you might see two or three of these in your adult life,” said David Humphrey, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Paducah.

AAA is predicting this will be the busiest holiday travel season ever, in part because Christmas and New Year’s Eve fall on weekends this year. AAA spokesman Mantill Williams said nearly 51 million people were traveling by car.

The storm snarled the hubs of operations for the nation’s three largest package shippers.

A snowstorm that dropped record amounts on parts of the Midwest halts traffic on southbound Interstate 65 in southern Indiana. Indiana State Police reported more than 100 stranded vehicles Thursday between Indianapolis and Louisville, Ky.

Atlanta-based UPS Inc. said its employees would work 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.