CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE INDIAN AND THE SOUTH WIND

Intimately associated with the legend and folk lore of the Indians of Puget Sound is the south wind, the balmy Chinook, the harbinger, the first breath of early spring time. It is the precursor of all that is glorious in pleasant days, sunshine and joy. It comes up over the land, perfumed and odorous from the sea islands. Its touch is like that of a maiden’s palm, gentle and soft. Its tread is silent like the flight of a peri, but it is strong in its coming, for snow peaks and icy crags melt before it like banks of fog. It may come in May or it may come in December, and its influence is felt for good. The Indians watch for its coming as they did for the salmon, the king of fishes, long before the white man came upon the coast to share in its benign influence.

There was a beautiful superstition or tradition among the Indians that the Chinook always came in the night time and the white man with all his learning has never yet proved that it does not. The stolid Indian waked in the morning, went to the door of his wigwam and found it fanning his cheeks. The white man came, and he too when he waked himself at morning would find the Chinook a-blowing. So it is to-day. Though the white man has had a half century to discover the secrets of this pleasant wind, they have never yet been told. They only know from whence to look for it—from over the sea—as did the Indians before them.

As all meteorologists on the coast know and old residents as well, the prevailing winds of the year are southerly, but all southerly winds are not Chinook blows. They are as distinctly different as the vesper and the Dakota blizzard. The Chinook is always a strong, steady southerly wind, never from any other point of the compass, unless it be slightly southwesterly. It is distinctly peculiar to the Northwest Pacific coast and its source is far out in the nasty storm center of the Pacific ocean, emanating from the famed Japan current which is the source of the remarkable humidity of the North Pacific coast.

The Chinook is remarkable for the warming-up it brings, and what is still more singular the glow from its presence is not dependent upon its force. This peculiar wind is, indeed, not a blow in the sense that the word is usually taken, but a smooth, steady flow of a great wind current that is the delight of all who come under its enchanting spell. And what warmth it brings. By official record on the Sound it has been known to elevate the mercury in the thermometer 19 degrees in an hour’s time, and yet the Chinook was not blowing above a 12-mile-an-hour rate. That is good evidence that the amount of heat it brings is independent of the force of the wind.

The spring months of the year is the season proper of the Chinook, but meteorologists say there are exceptions and the old and observant pioneer will doubtless bear out this statement. It has been observed to blow in December at Olympia, where is located the oldest weather station in Washington. There 20 years’ records of the weather in Western Washington, from a total of 5,700 distinct and separate observations made with a statement of every plus and minus change of 10 degrees or more in both the maximum and minimum of the temperature, shows that the months of the year when the most decided changes occur in Western Washington are March, April, May and October. During the other months the temperature varies but little from day to day. Of decided temperature in this western country 24 degrees is the record of greatest variation in any 24 hours, either of maximum or minimum, that was ever noticed. A change in the maximum of 40 degrees in 24 hours in Texas in winter is said to be a common thing. The cause is said to be that immediately preceding a norther comes a warm, moist wave, which runs the thermometer up to 65 or 70 degrees on a winter day, and by next morning the thermometer has fallen to 30 or more degrees. By reason of our contiguity to the Japan current such extreme and sudden changes are impossible.

It is only for two months in the year—July and August—that the prevailing winds are not southerly; then they may be said to be northerly. June immediately preceding the first of these two months, and September immediately following them, each have about 50 per cent of northerly and southerly winds.

This mere statement of wind courses is really an explanation of the cause of such a long rainy season on the Northwest coast. By scientific investigation it has been demonstrated that all cyclonic depressions originating in or over the Pacific ocean during those ten months of the year when southerly winds prevail pass at a sufficiently low latitude to cause the winds in Western Washington to blow from the south or southwest. These winds always bring up from the ocean that excess of humidity or moistness which is so characteristic of the country.

This prevailing moist-laden atmosphere or wind current from the ocean and the presence of the towering Cascade barrier paralleling the coast so closely is the true secret of the peculiar climate. Move the Cascade range of mountains and meteorologists tell us that we would at once experience a great difference in climatic conditions. The excess of moisture now so common on a comparatively narrow strip of coast line would find its way inland and distribute itself over a vast area of country. Desert and sagebrush plains would be turned into blooming gardens, and corn and wine would grow and flow where now only the sagehen and jack rabbit find congenial homes. The prevailing south and southwesterly winds would not, say the meteorologists, be interrupted in their regular course because their source would not be interrupted. And there is so much of that dirty weather always present in the ocean caused by the presence of the Japan current which strikes our coast that the atmosphere would still have its excess of humidity. In the Japan current lies the source of bad weather off shore and on the coast line. To such a nicety have meteorologists reduced this potent factor in our weather that they can always with a degree of certainty scarcely attainable in other sections, predict the character of the weather coming on.