Before starting, I want to explain one of the reasons I'm here. I recently studied an English course in Canada, of course I learnt just the basics of the language. One of the activities they encouraged us doing to practice was writing short essays. I found the steemit community few days ago and I think this is an extraordinary project to share and discuss information freely. That is why I think It would be great if native English people can take a look and make corrections to improve myself. Thanks!
When I knew I was going to travel to Calgary, Canada, one of my biggest fears was the cold weather of the winter. I'm used to live in temperatures not lower than 5 °C which is 41 °F for winter and I had felt I was dying from cold. When I started to research the winter temperatures in Calgary (which it seems to be the third coldest city in Canada) I found they can reach -25 °C or -13 °F on average for winter, thus, I was astonished, I couldn't even imagine how a person feels that temperature.
I made some research before I travel and I found there is an interesting phenomenon named "Chinook". This phenomenon are warm winds coming from the Pacific ocean that go through the rocky mountains keeping warm everything on its road. The change in temperature can be more than 20 °C or 36 °F. Thus, one day the temperature is -15 °C or 5 °F and the next morning is 5 °C or 41 °F. The sensation is extraordinary because it really makes the difference, even more, because the salt that is used to melt the snow, when Chinooks occurs one can feel a subtle breeze like that of the beach.
This phenomenon can last from hours to weeks. During my stay in this city (from September to January), this phenomenon happened at least once per week and lasted two weeks on average, being a great break from low temperatures. One of the best virtues of the Chinook are the sunrises and sunsets, since it is possible to distinguish the warm winds from that of the season, named "arch Chinook". But what could be the worst of Chinooks is that due the drastic change in pressure, people can have headaches.
The word "Chinook" (which pronunciation is "shinook") seems to come from natives or first nation people who are named the same way. The meaning of this word is "snow eater" because when this phenomenon happens, the snow melts due the temperatures above 0 °C or 32 °F.
Sunset at University of Calgary.
