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Police car sirens whine through city streets. Officers are busy attending unusually high numbers of car accidents, rowdy crowd behaviour, domestic violence and suicides. Hospitals overflow and the undertakers count the cash.

Long-term residents know what is driving everybody crazy – the hot and dry wind that is blowing down the mountain range or out of arid regions.

They call it the föhn in Central Europe, chinook and Santa Ana in North America, sharav in Israel, and mistral in France. Every country has its own name for the ill winds.

Meteorologists and medical scientists of Alpine countries studied these winds for many years and confirmed a link between increases in accident, crime and suicide rates and the onset of the föhn.

The chinook in the Rocky Mountains takes the blame for migraine and the sharav in Israel is said to cause weather sensitivity.