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.
See it at these spots
Open the live wind, wave, and tide forecast for each spot in Wavind.
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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.