Chinook may refer to:
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CHINOOK, a tribe of North American Indians, dwelling at the mouth of the Columbia river, Washington. They were fishermen and traders, and used huge canoes of hollowed cedar trunks. The tribe is practically extinct, but the name survives in the trade language known as "Chinook jargon." This has been analysed as composed of two-fifths Chinook, two-fifths other Indian tongues, and the rest English and Canadian French; but the proportion of English has tended to increase. The Chinookan linguistic family includes a number of separate tribes.
The name Chinook is also applied to a wind which blows from W. or N. over the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, where it descends as a dry wind warm in winter and cool in summer (cf. Fohn). It is due to a cyclone passing northward, and continues from a few hours to several days. It moderates the climate of the eastern Rockies, the snow melting quickly on account of its warmth and vanishing on account of its dryness, so that it is said to "lick up" the snow from the slopes.
See Gill, Dictionary of Chinook Jargon (Portland, Ore., 1891); Boas, "Chinook Texts," in Smithsonian Report, Bureau of Ethno logy (Washington, 1894); J. C. Pilling, "Bibliography of Chinookan Languages," Smithsonian Report, Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1893); Horatio Hale, Manual of Oregon Trade Language (London, 1890); G. C. Shaw, The Chinook Jargon (Seattle, 1909); Handbook of American Indians (Washington, 1907).
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Chinook
A chinook is a warm westerly wind that sometimes flows over Canada's Rocky Mountains in the winter. It can raise temperatures in southern Alberta by twenty or thirty degrees in an hour. A chinook is caused when air flowing off the Pacific Ocean is raised by the mountains and heated as the water vapor in the air condenses. Then it is warmed more as it flows down the other side of the mountains and is compressed. It flows out over the prairie, and may travel as far as the eastern border of Alberta if it is especially strong. The chinook is also called "snow eater", because it can melt snow so quickly.
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