Chinooks. The word to an unfamiliar reader may seem like a clever amalgamation of racial slurs directed towards Asians. But in celebration of the arrival of spring and bandwagon jumping (hurrah!) onto another online writing medium, chinooks will do for today.

Wikipedia will define chinooks as “a Föhn wind, a rain shadow wind which results from the subsequent adiabatic warming of air which has dropped most of its moisture on windward slopes (orographic lift). As a consequence of the different adiabatic rates of moist and dry air, the air on the leeward slopes becomes warmer than equivalent elevations on the windward slope“. 

Based on my extensive knowledge and study of Weather.com (dang, homeslice!), in a nutshell, it is a warm wind from the west. 

Chinooks signal the coming of spring, the warming of weather, and the end of winter. It is a powerful force that eats away at the snow and any stubborn remnants of cold. A large town hit by a chinook could endure winter temperatures in the east end, while its western inhabitants could flip-flop around in shorts.

It is a burst of welcome, crafting some of the most breathtaking sunsets and sunsets ever seen. 

 

In the end, chinooks are still gusts of wind, unseen and intangible. It carries no rock, machete, or firearm. Yet it has power in its effect. It roars in from the west, tumbling down mountains and rushing into the field, stirring up a change that is neither hollow or unprepared, but confidently undeniable and powerful.

2For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action. 3But I am sending the brothers in order that our boasting about you in this matter should not prove hollow, but that you may be ready, as I said you would be.

Its been spring for a while. Let’s get stirring.