foehn

plural foehns · alternative foen · alternative föhn · alternative fohn

1. A warm dry wind blowing down the north sides of the Alps, especially in Switzerland.

   The foehn and the sun must have awakened the spirits of spring way up in the heights.

   1971, WW Kibler, translating Gian Fontana, ‘The Mayor of Valdei’, in Bezzola (ed.), The Curly-Horned Cow, Peter Owen 1971, p. 71

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   The foehns of the northern Alps are world-renowned for the formation of thermal belts on the alp terraces above the deep, U-shaped, glaciated valleys. Here the foehn phenomenon was first identified and the German word for "fall" or "descent" applied to it.

   1985, Paul E. Lydolph, The Climate of the Earth, Rowman & Littlefield, page 161

2. climatologyA similar katabatic wind developing on the lee side of a mountain.

   The foehn, I learned, was first recorded in the Alps but is found all over the world. The Santa Anas contain the occasional foehn, nicknamed “murder winds” and immortalized in Joan Didion's 1965 essay “Los Angeles Notebook"

   2011, Claire Dederer, Poser: A Mother's Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, Bloomsbury, page 261

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   This is particularly noticeable in Foehn winds—warm winds that descend from mountainous areas down to areas of lower elevation. Wind patterns considered Foehn include the dry southerly wind blowing through the Alps, Switzerland and across southern Germany. The Sharav or Hamsin winds blowing through the desert in the Middle East are also Foehn winds. The Sirocco winds that blow through Italy and the Mistral winds that blow through southern France are both considered Foehns.

   2013, Case Adams Naturopath, Asthma Solved Naturally, Logical Books, page 111