Chinook wind
[2] In the interior of North America, the Blackfoot people call these winds the "snow eater";[4] however, the more commonly used term "Chinook" originates from the name of the eponymous Chinook people, who lived near the ocean, along the lower Columbia River, where the term was first derived.
These same winds have more recently been called the pineapple express, since they are of tropical origin, roughly from the area of the Pacific near Hawaii.
In exposed areas, fresh gales are frequent during a Chinook, but strong gale- or storm-force winds are uncommon; most of the region's stormy winds come when a fast "westerly" jet stream lets air masses from temperate and subarctic latitudes clash.
[2][1] However, the common pronunciation current throughout most of the inland Pacific Northwest, Alberta, and the rest of Canada, is /ʃɪˈnʊk/ shi-NUUK, as in French.
[citation needed] This difference may be because it was the Métis employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, who were familiar with the Chinook people and country, brought the name east of the Cascades and Rockies, along with their own ethnic pronunciation.
[2] Native legend of the Lil'wat subgroup of the St'at'imc tells of a girl named Chinook-Wind, who married Chinook Glacier, and moved to his country, which was in the area of today's Birkenhead River.
Interior Chinooks become less frequent further south in the United States, and are not as common north of Red Deer, but they can and do occur annually as far north as High Level in northwestern Alberta and Fort St. John in northeastern British Columbia, and as far south as Las Vegas, Nevada, and occasionally to Carlsbad, in eastern New Mexico.
[12] During the winter, driving can be treacherous, as the wind blows snow across roadways, sometimes causing roads to vanish and snowdrifts to pile up higher than a metre.
Empty semitrailer trucks driving along Highway 3 and other routes in southern Alberta have been blown over by the high gusts of wind caused by interior Chinooks.
Typically, the colours will change throughout the day, starting with yellow, orange, red, and pink shades in the morning as the sun comes up, grey shades at midday changing to pink / red colours, and then orange / yellow hues just before the sun sets.
The frequent midwinter thaws by interior Chinooks in Great Plains country are more of a bane than a blessing to gardeners.
Plants can be visibly brought out of dormancy by persistent, warm interior Chinook winds, or have their hardiness reduced even if they appear to remain dormant.
Many plants which do well at Winnipeg – where constant cold maintains dormancy throughout the winter – are difficult to grow in the Alberta Chinook belt.
Interior Chinook winds are said to sometimes cause a sharp increase in the number of migraine headaches suffered by the locals.
The föhns called "Chinook winds" are seen throughout most of inland western North America, particularly the Rocky Mountain region.
On rare occasions, Chinook winds generated on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains have reached as far east as Wisconsin.
A similar, local föhn wind regularly occurs in the Cook Inlet region in Alaska, as air moves over the Chugach Mountains between Prince William Sound and Portage Glacier.
