warming center

plural warming centers · alternative warming centre

1. USAn artificially warmed emergency shelter that operates during dangerously cold weather to provide care and relief for people affected by the low temperature.

   Synonyms: heat bank, warm bank, warming station · Antonyms: cooling center

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see warming, center.

   It is known that the warming center formed in the Atlantic and moved northwestward across the Hudson Bay to a position northeast of Alaska.

   1966, Willis L. Webb, Structure of the Stratosphere and Mesosphere (International Geophysics Series; 9), Academic Press, →OCLC, page 172

   3 more examples

   On such days the fireplace was a cheerful, warming center of activity and Alice would often spread a quilt on the floor in front of it where boy and dog could play.

   1970, Junius Watson, Joe Jacoby, New York: McCall Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 91

   Part of the reason Thoreau lights on fireplaces, chimneys, and hearths as indexical locations has to do with all that they mean in terms of warming centers.

   1991, Frederick Garber, Thoreau's Fable of Inscribing (Princeton Legacy Library), Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 153

   We can see from the reanalysis that two anomalous warming centers in the tropical eastern Pacific straddle the equator and extend eastward.

   2000, Jiayu Zhou, William K.-M. Lau, “Intercomparison of AGCM Simulations of 1997/98 El Niño Impact on South American Summer Monsoon”, in Proceedings of the Annual Climate Diagnostics Workshop, volume 25, NOAA, →OCLC, page 333