Calgary

Thank you to Sandra to send the above postcard from Canada.

She wrote behind the postcard that
" Calgary is where I live. It's a city of over one million in the Southern part of Alberta, near the Foothills of the Rocky Moutains, where Banff lies.
Because we're close to these foothills we get Chinooks in the winter. Our temperature can go from -30 degree Celsius to +20 degree Celsius in just couple of minutes. We always look forward to our Chinooks, but it's not great for flowers and trees ! Sometimes they think spring has come !"


Chinooks are most prevalent over southern Alberta in Canada, especially in a belt from Pincher Creek and Crowsnest Pass through Lethbridge, which get 30 to 35 chinook days per year on average.

The reference to a wind or weather system, simply "a Chinook", originally meaning a warming wind from the ocean into the interior regions of the Pacific Northwest (the Chinook people lived near the ocean, along the lower Columbia River). A strong Chinook can make snow one foot deep almost vanish in one day. The snow partly melts and partly evaporates in the dry wind. Chinook winds have been observed to raise winter temperature, often from below −20°C (−4°F) to as high as 10°C to 20°C (50°F to 68°F) for a few hours or days, then temperatures plummet to their base levels.

Tags: Chinooks