Word: alaska
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...little village of Coldfoot, Alaska, 50 miles north of the Arctic Circle, has long endured jokes about its name. But last week no one in Coldfoot -- or anywhere else in Alaska -- was in much of a mood to laugh about the temperature. For a whole month, the entire state had been gripped by one of the fiercest Arctic cold waves on record. Some towns in the interior registered temperatures as low as -75 degrees F for days a time. As for Coldfoot, an unconfirmed reading there two weeks ago put the temperature at -82 degrees, colder than the official North...
...midweek, the icy blast had roared out of Alaska across western Canada and into the American Midwest. Driven by 100-m.p.h. winds and the strongest high- pressure system in North American history (barometers reached 31.85 in. of mercury), the frigid front generated mammoth snowstorms and in some areas dropped thermometer readings by as much as 70 degrees in a matter of hours...
...take weeks to assess the toll on the state. Schools closed, businesses ground to a halt, and hardy villagers huddled in their homes to keep warm. Furnaces shut down as heating oil turned to jelly, and stoves stood idle as propane gas liquefied. The greatest hardships occurred in central Alaska, where normal food deliveries were cut off. Governor Cowper called out the Air National Guard to parchute supplies into remote villages...
...cold? While winters are always frigid in the high latitudes of Alaska and Canada, the cold is usually mitigated by warm winds from the Pacific Ocean. This year, though, a mass of cold air called the Omega Block blew in from Siberia and settled over Alaska. A high-pressure zone got stuck between two low-pressure systems and stayed put over the state, keeping out the warming Pacific winds. By the time cold air moved out of Alaska and headed south, it had built up tremendous force...
...played really well, we had achance...the players felt like we could win," saidBill Evans, assistant coach of Alaska-Anchorage."There was a lot of pride involved...