Katabatic flow is a common, daily
occurrence worldwide. Solar heating tends to cause
upslope flow in
valleys during the warm part of the day, unless there is some
overriding larger scale
weather situation. When the sun gets low at the end of the day and stops heating the valley much of the air that was pushed up and out flows back down the hillsides into the valley. If the valley is well defined and not too wide then the air flowing down the various slopes will
converge over the center of the valley, and there will be a broad area of smoothly rising air there. This is known as a
Wonder Wind and is highly valued by pilots of
soaring aircraft.
There are
seasonal winds that flow over and down mountains and so are sometimes
described as katabatic, but they are, like the
Santa Ana winds of
Southern California, the result of
large scale conditions (strong
high pressure over
Utah and the
Great Basin in the case of Santa Ana winds) and not
diurnal heating/cooling cycles. See
foehn.