What's going on out West?

[notundecided]

71 degrees in Montana today. It's the dead of winter people.

[upaloopa]

1. Last weekend on the Central Coast we had Santa Ana

winds. Those are winds that blow from the east across the desert to west toward the ocean. Our temps were in the 80's at times.
Usually Santa Ana winds happen in the fall.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Several towns in Oregon recently hit 70 degrees. nt

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. I was in Laurel, Montana, in December 1993, when

we had a warm day. I don't think it was any 71 degrees though. I was told that the high temperature was the result of a Chinook.

Chinook winds /ʃɪˈnʊk/, or simply chinooks, are foehn winds in the interior West of North America, where the Canadian Prairies and Great Plains meet various mountain ranges, although the original usage is in reference to wet, warm coastal winds in the Pacific Northwest.

Chinook is claimed by popular folk-etymology to mean "snow-eater", but it is really the name of the people in the region where the usage was first derived. The reference to a wind or weather system, simply "a Chinook", originally meant a warming wind from the ocean into the interior regions of the Northwest of the USA (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 10-20°C (50-68°F) for a few hours or days, then temperatures plummet to their base levels. The greatest recorded temperature change in 24 hours was caused by Chinook winds on January 15, 1972, in Loma, Montana; the temperature rose from -48 to 9°C (-54 to 48°F).



Adiabatic warming of downward moving air produces the warm Chinook wind

[KT2000]

4. 48 degrees in NW Washington

Have not had to turn the heat on during the day lately.

[Laffy Kat]

5. Boulder, Colorado: 73 degrees presently.

It won't last, however; snow returns this weekend.

[kentuck]

6. I think the poles are quickly changing positions.

and Montana is farther south than New England in regards to the poles.

Colorado was almost 70 yesterday and is about 65 degrees today. Very unusual but not a record.

[bluedigger]

7. Water hoarding if people are smart.

There ain't gonna be none by summer.