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Thomas Gibson, Nancy McKeon, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest and Randy Quaid star in this four-hour mini-series event. The natural disaster drama is about three enormous weather systems that ultimately collide over Chicago, creating the worst super-storm in the nation's history--but only after they first cause the national power grid to collapse, making it impossible to warn anyone about the impending disaster. A few days shy of retiring from his job as chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service's storm prediction center, Andy Goodman (Dennehy) begins to follow three separate and potentially devastating weather systems--a cluster of tornadoes in the west, an unusually warm storm front in the south, and an Arctic system in the north. To help track the tornadoes in the west, which have already leveled Las Vegas, Andy enlists the aid of his friend and former colleague, "Tornado Tommy" (Quaid), an adventure tour operator who makes a living taking thrill-seekers up close and personal with twisters in Oklahoma's tornado alley. Unaware of the weather systems that threaten to destroy the city of Chicago, Amy Harkin (McKeon), a smart and ambitious local television journalist is focused on reporting on the record heat wave and drought that have crippled the city for six weeks. The city's residents have been asked to reduce their energy consumption and have been warned by Secretary of Energy, Shirley Abbott (Wiest), that the outdated national power grid could fail at any moment, leaving hundreds of millions of people without power. Mitch Benson (Gibson), Chief of Operations at Midwest Electric, a public utilities company, faces his own worst-case scenario when a severe thunderstorm destroys the city's primary power generating plant. Mitch and Amy must then race against time and the deadly forces of nature to restore power to the city so the public, as well as emergency workers, can be warned about the devastating storms which Andy has been tracking. Their goal is threatened when an electrical chain reaction cascades into the collapse of the North American power grid and causes a national blackout, just as the record-setting Category 6 storms finally collide over Chicago. Rating: TVPG-DL |
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