CHICAGO (AP) – A winter storm moved into the Great Lakes on Friday, blanketing the region with several inches of snow and disrupting holiday travel.

More than 450 flights were canceled at O’Hare International Airport by late afternoon, and delays averaged 90 minutes. Officials urged travelers to check the status of their flights.

Delays at Midway Airport averaged two hours, with about 20 cancellations.

Both runways at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport were closed due to snow for about an hour early Friday afternoon and then at least two hours in the evening, airport spokesman Ryan McAdams said. But the main north-south runway later reopened, and the second runway was expected to later Friday, he said.

Two of three runways were closed at Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., causing many delays and seven flight cancellations, airport spokeswoman Sharyn Wisniewski said. At Gerald R. Ford International Airport in Grand Rapids, Mich., snow caused some ground-radar equipment to shut down, forcing the closing of a runway to arriving planes for about two hours, said Tony Molinaro, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Planes were diverted or circled overhead while crews replaced the device, which tells aircraft whether they are properly lined up for landing.

The storm was expected to dump significant snow on the Great Lakes states and leave several inches in the central Plains. It caused numerous fender-benders in Kansas and Missouri as it moved through Friday morning.

The Green Bay Packers asked for 300 people to help shovel snow at Lambeau Field today in preparation for Sunday’s game against Detroit.

In the Southeast, forecasters said additional rain was likely this weekend in the Atlanta metro area, and may determine whether 2007 is the driest year on record for the region.

As of Friday morning, the area had just under 30 inches of rain for the year. The record was set in 1954, when the area had less than 32 inches of rain, according to the weather service.

In the West, rain and high elevation snow was forecast from Washington through central California.

AP-ES-12-28-07 2031EST