Santa Ana winds are a geographically specific type of wind that occur in Southern California known as katabatic winds. They are cold, dry, down-sloping winds that warm as they descend a mountain side.

Geography and gravity combine here to unleash powerful katabatic winds—dense waves of cold air that rush down mountain corridors like avalanches tumbling toward the sea. The next blast hits.

The downhill winds produced are called katabatic winds. They do an efficient job controlling the maximum temperatures on the surface of the glaciers, which occur namely during the summer.

Moulins, drumlins, eskers and moraines. Cirques and arêtes. Cold katabatic winds blowing down a mountain, huffed from a glacier’s snout and said to be its spirit. Jemma Wadham’s Ice Rivers ...

The key characteristic is that the winds are what’s known as katabatic, meaning they flow downhill, says Mingfang Ting, a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School. As the air mass drops in ...

and the Zonda winds in Argentina. These are all called katabatic winds because they move high-density air downslope. As the winds funnel through narrow mountain passes, they gather speed and ...

According to an article published in LiveScience, the men are braving freezing temperatures and katabatic winds up to the recorded maximum of 320 km/h as they make their way across the continent ...