"A Warm Wind and a Bad Headache": _NYT_ 2/8/00

[Mike Cleven]

David Robertson wrote:
>
> (national edition, _New York Times_, Feb. 8, 2000, page D8)
>
> "Vital Signs", by John O'Neil:
>
> "Cause & Effect:  A Warm Wind and a Bad Headache"
>
> "Cold winds cause headaches everywhere.  Out in Western Canada [sic],
> there's a warm winter wind called the Chinook that many blame for
> migraines...."
>
> A fairly interesting, brief, article.  I'm interested in pointing out the
> not exactly obscure fact that such winds are called "Chinooks" in the
> Northwest USA also.  Presumably the term originated here in /wimalh
> IlI7i/, the Columbia River Gorge country, and from the first referred to
> winds that blow from Chinook country, no?

I think that context may have arisen sort of simultaneously in the two
areas where "a Chinook" is a meteorological "object"..  The one of
course is Alberta and its southward neighbours down the inland lea of
the Rockies (I was in a spectacular Chinook in Denver once); the other
is in the Lower Mainland/Vancouver Island region of British Columbia, or
rather coastal British Columbia in general, where it refers to a warm,
wet stream of rain that, because it came from the southwest, the
direction of Astoria and the country of the Chinooks, that it was "the
Chinook wind"; most likely originally a Jargnism, in fact, given the way
the Jargon forms its directional winds is the same
(east/west/north/south being rather abstract, given the many directions
that wind can come from).  Its usage in Alberta - the wind that comes
from the land of the Chinooks - actually applies to the same wind after
it has been stripped of its moisture by the successive spines of the
cordillera; it may even be that the voyageurs and other HBC staff who
brought the term to Alberta (for surely this was the case, as any later
Albertan wouldn't have a clue where the Chinook country was, or care)
were aware of the meteorological relation.  In the Canadian
Encyclopaedia, there is no mention of the coastal usage to describe the
Chinook, also known as the Pineapple Express because of its warmth and
also because it quite often comes directly from Hawaii (bringing
pineapples to the grocers in the old days, one imagines); only of the
Albertan-Plains context of a warm, dry midwinter wind.

As for the migraines, I betcha it has to do with the ion content of the
dehydrated air.....
>
> Alan, this has been discussed before on the list, I believe, but if you
> care to interject an a propos cite or two, tant mieux.  The topic has, I
> believe, direct relevance to Chinook Jargon taken as a sociological
> phenomenon.
>
> There are similar prevailing winds in other regions, which tend to be
> known by regionally specific names.  Examples include "scirocco" < Arabic
> /sharq/; "Santa Anna"; and so on.  I'm quite interested in learning of
> other such names of winds *within the historic Chinook Jargon speech
> area*.  (Not that I'm implying much of a connection between blowing hot
> air and speaking ChInuk Wawa--regardless of some folks' opinions of
> activity on this list!  KhEltEsh hihi.)

In the Lillooet country, a wind or weather from the SW was "Squamish
wind"; more typically in local English (and possibly in the Jargon)
people will discuss where the weather systems bouncing around the
canyons and ranges came from and where they're going.  Naming winds
wasn't actually important, except to describe them; or in the case of
the Williwaw or Chinook, which had specific traits.
>
> Around this Spokane, Washington area, far inland and up a tributary of the
> Columbia, we have "Chinooks" blowing from the West across the plains of
> the Columbia Plateau.  To my knowledge, I've never heard another term for
> our local wind patterns, though my parents know the word "williwaw"
> /wI'lEwaa/ from the years we spent in Alaska.

A williwaw's a different thing isn't it; heavy wind and storm; I think
typically it's a westerly, or is it the cold "outflow" winds that pour
down over the passes out of the Yukon and Atlin-Stikine country?

Your Chinooks are the same weather system as the one described above;
maybe we should educate meteorologists etc. that a "Chinook wind"
doesn't just happen on the Plains/Prairies....

> Another point, rambling, is that on the eastern slope of the continental
> divide, in Montana, the corresponding winds are to the best of my
> knowledge called "Chinooks".  My mother is from that region, by the way;
> little does she know she's among my prime informants.  From both her and
> my father, a native of Spokane, I've always heard the pronunciation
> /shEnU'k/.  The first vowel is hardly voiced, so the word can also sound
> like /shnUk/.  This looks like indirect evidence that folks around here
> never heard much of the indigenous pronunciation /chInuk/.

I think it's a French-influenced pronounciation; I always notice
Albertans take great pains to use "sh" (long, almost stressed) rather
than "tch", as if they were pronouncing a -French- and not a -native-
word; mind you native languages on the Prairies have much different
phonological systems, wake nah?

Mike
http://members.home.net/skookum/
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