Diablo winds fueled the Oakland hills firestorm in October 1991. Of course, streamlining winds into general categories is smart, scientifically. Meteorologists have shown that similar atmospheric mechanisms can explain downslope winds everywhere. As the f hn blows from higher to lower elevations of Austria and Germany, it warms by adiabatic compression at a rate of 5 degrees F per thousand feet. Often such air has lost a great deal of moisture to precipitation on its earlier upslope journey, so relative humidities can drop into the single digits as the air descends and warms again.
Katabatic winds are cold and dense air pulled downhill by gravity.
This is how science characterizes the coho wind. The most frequent fall winds occur as cold, heavy air spills off the plateaus of Greenland and Antarctica toward the coasts. Cape Denison on the Antarctic coast has the greatest average wind speeds on Earth, primarily because these fall winds average 50 m.p.h. Californians refer to their great katabatic wind as the Mono wind. It originates from the cold air over the Great Basin, particularly in Mono County, that spills out of high mountain valleys at over 9,000 feet and streams down the canyons on the west slopes of the rugged Sierra Nevada.