warming center

• warming centre

warming center (plural warming centers)

1. An emergency shelter that operates when temperatures become dangerously low, serving stranded travelers, displaced renters and homeowners, and the homeless.
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see warming,‎ center.
   • 1966, Willis L. Webb, Structure of the Stratosphere and Mesosphere (International Geophysics Series; 9), Academic Press, →OCLC, page 172:

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

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

     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.

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

     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.

   • 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:

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

• warming centre