Southern Alberta
Is a Chinook blowing?
The warm, dry wind that comes down off the Rockies and can lift Calgary 20 degrees in an afternoon. This page checks whether one is actually happening — right now, from live conditions.
Conditions observed 4:15 p.m.
No Chinook right now. The Chinook belt is running ordinary conditions — nothing arriving off the mountains warm and dry enough to count.
- Medicine Hat19°C
Medicine Hat is 19°C on a E wind — not a downslope westerly.
18° dry · E 6 km/h
- Calgary15°C
Calgary is 15°C on a S wind — not a downslope westerly.
15° dry · S 14 km/h
- Red Deer13°C
Red Deer is 13°C on a E wind — not a downslope westerly.
15° dry · E 11 km/h
- Lethbridge14°C
Lethbridge is 14°C, but the air is humid and the wind is not off the mountains — warming, not a Chinook.
10° dry · ENE 11 km/h
What counts as a Chinook here
A warm spell is not a Chinook. Chinook air has crossed the Rockies and descended, which warms it and dries it out — so this page asks for three things at once, all measured at the airport weather station:
- Dry air — the temperature at least 12°C above the dew point.
- Wind — at least 15 km/h.
- From the west — blowing down off the mountains, not up from the south.
All three have to hold. Temperature alone is not enough and gets it wrong often: on 20 January 2025 Calgary rose from −19°C to −5°C in six hours, the biggest jump of the month — and it was a cold snap breaking, not a Chinook. The wind was light and the air was damp.
This page reports a Chinook that is happening now. It does not forecast one. Conditions from Environment and Climate Change Canada; thresholds were set by checking them against four winter months of Calgary observations.
The 2026–27 season so far
2
separate Chinooks on 3 days, watching since October 1, 2026.
- Longest: 2 days, October 5, 2026 to October 6, 2026
- Most recent: October 6, 2026 · Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat
Counted from our own saved conditions, one reading a day at about 4:15 p.m., so this is days the afternoon reading met the test rather than every Chinook. One that arrived overnight and faded by mid-afternoon will not appear, and consecutive days count as a single Chinook rather than several.
Current conditions from Environment and Climate Change Canada, used under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Chinooks are a southern and foothills phenomenon, so only the cities where they actually occur are shown — Edmonton and the north are not part of the Chinook belt.