Just 85 miles (136km) from her destination, Endurance was frozen in place stuck fast in a great chunk of ice.

ECONOMIST: Antarctic exploration

The roof of a house in Chichester, West Sussex, was damaged in 2010 when a chunk of ice crashed into it at night.

BBC: Falling ice chunk smashes into Derbyshire house

The drifting chunk of ice, more than 32 miles long by 12 miles wide, forced the drill ship Noble Discoverer to move off the planned well as a precaution, company spokesman Curtis Smith said.

CNN: Ice floe halts Shell's new Arctic well

The Met Office has issued a yellow "be aware" warning of ice for a large chunk of the UK from London in the south east, across north Wales up to Northern Ireland and across northern England and southern Scotland.

BBC: Power problems remain after severe weather cuts supplies

The search was hampered, Dr. Grokhovsky said, by officials of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which sealed off the area around an 25-foot-wide hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, where a chunk was believed to have fallen.

WSJ: Russia Meteor Was Largest in More Than a Century

Dr. Grokhovsky said the search was hampered by officials of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which sealed off the area around an 8-meter-wide hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, where a chunk of the meteor was believed to have fallen.

WSJ: Russia Meteor Was Largest in More Than a Century