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DG DISPATCH - HEADACHE: Canada’s Chinook Winds Linked To Migraine By Cameron Johnston Special to DG News BARCELONA, SPAIN -- June 25, 1999 -- A legendary phenomenon in Canadian weather, the chinook wind, which roars down out of the Rocky Mountains and in minutes can drive the mid-winter temperature of the Canadian prairies from frigid lows to balmy highs, has been linked to a less endearing event - migraine headaches. At the 9th International Headache Society meeting, in Barcelona, Spain, Dr. Werner Becker and colleagues from the department of neurology at the University of Calgary, Canada, reported that high velocity winds are associated with a significantly higher incidence of migraine headaches. Seventy-five patients, mostly female, were asked to keep daily diaries of their migraine attacks for a minimum of two months between September 1995 and June 1997. The headache records were compared against meteorological data, with particular attention paid to the onset of a chinook wind each winter and the wind speed on the days when they reported their headaches. Out of 213 days where the mean wind velocity was in excess of 38 km/hr, the subjects who were keeping diaries experienced a mean number of 45.5 migraine headache - that is, they had a migraine around one-quarter of the days when there were high winds. The likelihood of them experiencing a migraine on one of the days when the winds were not strong was only around 10 percent. The odds ratio of the subjects experiencing migraine on a chinook day was a statistically significant 1.41. It has long been known that changes in barometric pressure can bring on migraines in some people, and this small and novel study suggests that changes in wind velocity might also play an important role in triggering these events for some people. The changes in atmospheric pressure that precede a chinook also caused an increase in migraine headaches, but this was not related to the wind speed. Dr. Becker and his colleagues reported that age also appeared to be a significant factor in the study, with older people being more sensitive to chinook-induced migraines. Only in Canada, you say? E-mail this page to a friend or colleague! To print, use this version