Environment: Even The Eskimos Froze

A record cold wave moves from Alaska to the Midwest

The 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...

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