Out Our Way: Then came the chinook - Jude 20-21

Out our way, winter can be a tough season - and a long one.

One year, it began in mid-October and the blizzard shut down power for the whole county. Snow in May is not unheard of - and the calving season in February can really be brutal. Yup, the land of "Alberta Clippers" reminds us of the old saying "There's nothing between the North Pole and us but a barbed wire fence." But it is also the land of a dozen "springs," called chinook winds, that also come to us all winter long.

What a feeling it is when the arctic winds are suddenly pushed aside by a warm breeze that starts the ice melting and...