Word: winterizer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bill Alford's troubles began during the devastating winter storms of 1982. That January a 15-ft. chunk of earth slid away from in front of their bluff-top home in Bolinas, Calif., about 30 miles north of San Francisco, and crashed to the beach below. A year later another 15 ft. vanished, leaving the house just a few feet from the edge of a 160-ft. cliff. So, in the summer of 1984, the Alfords moved their 1,300-sq.-ft. house 32 ft. back from the edge. Then came Valentine's Day 1985. Following unusually high tides...
...looking at the genocide of an entire ecosystem," says Oliver Houck, a Louisiana environmental lawyer. Indeed, the loss of the state's marshes affects more than just local residents: the area provides almost 30% of the nation's fish harvest and 40% of the fur catch, and is a winter habitat for some two-thirds of the migratory birds in the Mississippi flyway. Says Oysterman Matthew Farac, speaking of the 32-mile stretch from the mouth of the Mississippi to Empire, La.: "There is no land left. It's all gone...
...additional complication on the West Coast. Periodically, a warm- water current in the Pacific shifts eastward in a pattern called El Nino, a Spanish eponym for the Christ Child, so called because it appears off South America around Christmastime. The result: higher sea levels, unusually high tides and severe winter storms along the western coast of the Americas. During the most recent major occurrence of El Nino, in the early 1980s, sea levels along the California coast rose an average of 5 in. With the added tides and storms, the effects were catastrophic. Thomas Terich, a professor of geography...
...Vista Motel on Topsail Island, N.C., whose property was damaged in 1985 by Hurricane < Gloria, wanted to move inland, but their federal insurance would not cover the $150,000 cost. It would, however, pay $220,000 for repairs and renovations. The motel stayed put. Then came last winter's New Year's storm, which tore out all 15 of the first-floor units. Says Manager Frances Ricks: "There's a feeling...
American scientists have eagerly pursued that future since last winter, when a burst of research activity rescued superconductors from relative obscurity. The excitement followed a discovery in the spring of 1986 by IBM scientists in Zurich. Their find: a metallic ceramic compound that became a superconductor at a temperature well above the previously achieved record of 23.2 Kelvin, or -418 degrees F. By year's end researchers were developing materials that became superconductors at higher and higher temperatures. At the University of Houston, a team led by Paul C.W. Chu set the currently recognized standard last February, when it produced...