In five places the weather has a proper noun. A wind arrives often enough and hard enough to have earned its own name — off a river valley, down a mountain wall, in off the sea — and the vineyards, the forecasts and the mood of the streets all bend around it.
The mistral takes its name from Occitan maestral, out of Latin magister — 'the masterly one'. It funnels down the Rhône corridor between the Alps and the Massif Central, averaging around 50 km/h with gusts past 100, and can hold for a week; the Provençal rule that it always signs a lease for three days, six or nine has no meteorology behind it. Painters have credited it ever since with the hard clarity of the southern light.
The chinook is a foehn wind: Pacific air sheds its moisture on the western slopes, then warms by compression as it sinks down the eastern side of the Rockies. The belt running south of here, from Crowsnest Pass down to Lethbridge, averages 30 to 35 chinook days a year; each one is announced by the 'chinook arch' of cloud standing over the mountains — and by a reliable wave of headaches.
The south-easterly is nicknamed the Cape Doctor, from an old belief that it blew disease out of the streets. Forced up the mountain's face, its moisture condenses into the 'tablecloth' that spills over the edge and evaporates halfway down the cliff.
The zonda is the Andean foehn: Pacific air rises over a cordillera crest around 6,000 m, drops its snow on the Chilean side and arrives here compressed, hot and desiccated. Nine zondas in ten fall between May and November, gusts can pass 240 km/h, and the national weather service issues colour-coded zonda alerts for them exactly as it does for storms.
The nor'wester is the Southern Alps' foehn: moist Tasman air dumps its rain on the West Coast and comes down the eastern side hot and parching. Canterbury blames it for withered paddocks and short tempers alike. On 7 February 1973 one pushed the city to 41.6°C, its highest temperature on record.
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