Good Grief!  It is Wednesday January 4th and for the umpteenth time my IPod weather app is flashing that red banner of wind warnings in the Crowsnest Pass. They might as well just leave that banner streaming there all the time the way it is going. One hundred kilometer winds forecast here, one hundred and ten in Calgary.
“Strong westerly winds are blowing along the Southern Alberta foothills. Winds will spread eastward towards Calgary blah blah blah.” It is like a stuck record.  And man, have I had my fill of this continuous bulk movement of air.
When I chose to move back here in 2005 an old friend in Fernie by the name of Buck Jones said: “You will regret it, the wind blows there all the damn time.”  I remember saying something like how bad could it be really! I grew up here and learned how to lean into the wind as a kid but Holy Mackerel, this is different now.  I saw a raven blast by my house this morning at about 80 kmph and when he looked down at me he had a real worried look on his face.
The lenticular clouds so typical of this chinooking phenomenon are spectacular to look at but they are also the signal that down slope winds are a comin’.  Another predictor of a warm high speed attack coming is Chinook Peak west of us in the Flathead Range.  That long streak of streaming snow coming off its peak means we are in for it.
Sooo..  David Phillips, Canada’s most popular weatherman and great purveyor of climatological wisdom and Environment Canada’s respected predictor of what weather is to come.  What sayest thou now?  La Nina will bring a brutally hard winter this year was what senior climatologists were initially predicting.  Mr. Phillips is quoted recently as saying:” My God, nobody would have been able to suggest this kind of weather that you’ve seen so far would have materialized.”  He also said that even in an El Nino year it wouldn’t have been this balmy and that they have “backed off on their model”.  Backed off indeed!
The chinook phenomenon is quite simply, westerly winds that have shed their moisture and then rumble down the eastern slopes of the Rockies where pressure in the lower atmosphere heats it.  Anyone who has used a bicycle pump knows that the handle warms up as the pressure rises. Guess I dated myself with that comment aye!
Speaking of pressure, I am grateful that I have a metal roof that is thoroughly screwed down.  I was driving down Highway 22 on November 23rd when the Bernoulli effect was once again proven at the J.T. Foster High School in Nanton. The reduced pressure on the rooftop caused by 100 kilometer plus winds peeled the roof off the gymnasium clean as a whistle.  There were not many trucks on 22 that day but the one that I was behind coming out of Longview took out three white posts when a cross wind caught him.
It is interesting to read that Alberta Transportation has decided to put wind sensors and warning signs activated by them on this highway.