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Katabatic wind
A gravity-driven wind formed when cold, dense air drains downhill off a high plateau or glacier — often offshore, often ferocious.
Also known as: drainage wind, fall wind
Cold air is dense. Let it sit on a plateau, a glacier, or a snow-covered mountain range, and gravity eventually pulls it down to sea level. That collapsing air mass is a katabatic wind — gravity-driven, usually cold and dry, sometimes very strong.
Classic examples:
- Bora — Adriatic coast, 30–60 kt in winter, gusting well past 80
- Mistral — Rhône valley, partly synoptic but with strong katabatic reinforcement
- Antarctic coast — the most consistent katabatic flow on Earth
- Fjord exits in Norway, Greenland, Patagonia
For riders, katabatic winds matter because they tend to be:
- Offshore (cold air drains seaward from continental interiors)
- Very gusty — gust factors of 1.5+ are normal
- Underforecast by global models that smooth the terrain that funnels them
If a forecast at the foot of a major mountain range shows light wind but the inland air mass is freezing, treat any offshore reading with healthy suspicion. See Types of Wind for the wider taxonomy.
Related terms
- Bora A cold, katabatic NE wind that crashes off the Dinaric Alps onto the eastern Adriatic — sudden, dry, and one of the most violent winds in the Mediterranean.
- Föhn wind A warm, dry, often gusty downslope wind on the lee side of a mountain range — Föhn in the Alps, Chinook in the Rockies, Halny in the Tatras.
- Gradient wind The large-scale wind driven by pressure differences between weather systems — the synoptic background flow that everything else rides on top of.
- Gust factor The ratio of peak gust to average wind — the single most useful number for telling smooth wind from a fight.