Leo Blames Climate Change For Totally Normal Canadian Weather

He's obviously never heard of the Chinooks. (Though we hadn't either, TBH.)
Joel Ryan/Invision/AP

A spooky thing happened while Leonardo DiCaprio was filming "The Revenant" in the wilds of Canada. More than once, actually. Several times during the shoot, the crew found themselves in a frozen, snow-covered landscape one day -- only to have a warm wind blow through the next and melt much of the snow.

Leo, ever the activist, took this as a sign of climate change.

"We were in Calgary and the locals were saying, 'This has never happened in our province, ever,'" DiCaprio said at a recent screening of the movie. "We would come and there would be eight feet of snow, and then all of a sudden a warm gust of wind would come."

"It was scary," he continued. "I’ve never experienced something so firsthand that was so dramatic. You see the fragility of nature and how easily things can be completely transformed with just a few degrees' difference. It’s terrifying, and it’s what people are talking about all over the world. And it’s simply just going to get worse."

A valiant effort on behalf of a noble cause. Climate change is scary! But here's the thing: According to actual Canadians, this sort of thing is totally normal. Warm winds are a staple (albeit a strange staple) of the weather in Alberta, where "The Revenant" filmed. These winds are called "Chinooks," and they've been known to raise temperatures by 50 degrees Fahrenheit or more.

In fairness to Leo, last winter was marked by an unusually large amount of Chinooks. And that did cut the amount of snow on the ground enough that the crew of "The Revenant" had to truck in snow from the mountains for their shoot. So it's possible that some local commented on that, and he took it a little too far. Still, he's been mocked by Canadians and climate change deniers for his mixup -- and they have a point.

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