Today I got asked a question by a peer engineer who has nothing to do with flying. He asked me if a north wind was going to or coming from the north? And this is a good question. From an engineer’s perspective there’s no right or wrong. It’s just how you define it. It happens so that it’s defined as “coming from” which works nicely when “flying to” the north that both line up nicely and you can land on that runway pointing to the north straight into the wind.

But as so many things that surround us, there is no inherent right or wrong of this, it’s just how someone defined it. Electric current doesn’t flow from Plus to Minus, but from Minus to Plus by definition. But that’s just a model, meaning: does the current flow at all? Isn’t it all just waves? And weren’t electrons just energy? Definitions.

In the end all it matters is that you have a system of definitions that is coherent and doesn’t contradict itself that you can work with. That’s all.

So north winds come from the north.