Word: frigid
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...appears frozen in time, an icy world surrounded by frigid seas where winds of 100 m.p.h. are not uncommon. No human is known to have set foot upon it until the 19th century, and even today it exposes unwary travelers to the greatest dangers. Temperatures regularly plunge to -100° F or below. Giant crevasses can open in the ice, swallowing men and machines. Sudden storms often blend ground and sky into one snowy blur that hopelessly disorients the most skilled aviators...
...Ontario, N.Y., are used to seeing steam spouting from the stacks of the Robert E. Ginna nuclear-power plant. So they were not excited last week when the 470-MW plant, which serves 320,000 customers in communities near Lake Ontario, once again began sending white plumes into the frigid air. But their calm turned to alarm when cars from local law-enforcement agencies arrived to block the plant's gates, and word spread that county officials were dusting off plans to evacuate surrounding residential areas. After twelve years of accident-free operation, the Ginna plant had sprung...
Experts groped for images of suitable enormity to describe the far-reaching cold wave. Meteorologist Robert Case of the National Weather Service called it simply "a glob, a monster." In essence, a frigid, unusually slow-moving air mass formed over Alaska and the Yukon, cooled further, and then was plunged suddenly southward through a high-altitude channel of powerful winds. Another National Weather Service meteorologist, Amet Figueroa, traced the violent cold even farther afield. Said he: "It has its origins in Siberia, where it's been lying for the past couple of weeks." The consequences of the Arctic cold...
...BONE-COLD MIDWEST The Plains states were frigid, even by local standards (22° in Omaha and Des Moines, -29° in Fargo, North Dakota), but the cold was no real surprise. "There are towns in North Dakota," explained one NWS meteorologist, "that haven't gotten above zero since the year began...
...historic cold and 30-m.p.h. winds left Chicago streets hushed and nearly deserted. The most prominent and telling sound was the blare of sirens cutting through the frigid city air. Firemen fought eight major fires on Sunday night alone. One on the city's West Side, ignited accidentally by a homeowner who used a blowtorch to defrost his frozen plumbing, ultimately destroyed 15 houses. The fire department had to cope with frozen hydrants and bursting hoses as well as the wind-whipped fires. Retreating from a flaming house, one dispirited fireman kicked at a useless ice-filled hose...