diff --git a/xarray/core/ops.py b/xarray/core/ops.py
index a7367f7ebcf..20cc9cc3a96 100644
--- a/xarray/core/ops.py
+++ b/xarray/core/ops.py
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 import inspect
 import operator
 import warnings
-from distutils.version import StrictVersion
+from distutils.version import LooseVersion
 
 import numpy as np
 import pandas as pd
@@ -525,7 +525,7 @@ def inject_bottleneck_rolling_methods(cls):
 
     # bottleneck rolling methods
     if has_bottleneck:
-        if StrictVersion(bn.__version__) < StrictVersion('1.0'):
+        if LooseVersion(bn.__version__) < LooseVersion('1.0'):
             return
 
         for bn_name, method_name in BOTTLENECK_ROLLING_METHODS.items():
diff --git a/xarray/core/rolling.py b/xarray/core/rolling.py
index c00fac2b5bc..8cd4df74c84 100644
--- a/xarray/core/rolling.py
+++ b/xarray/core/rolling.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 from __future__ import print_function
 import numpy as np
 import warnings
-from distutils.version import StrictVersion
+from distutils.version import LooseVersion
 
 from .pycompat import OrderedDict, zip
 from .common import ImplementsRollingArrayReduce, full_like
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ def __init__(self, obj, min_periods=None, center=False, **windows):
         """
 
         if (has_bottleneck and
-                (StrictVersion(bn.__version__) < StrictVersion('1.0'))):
+                (LooseVersion(bn.__version__) < LooseVersion('1.0'))):
             warnings.warn('xarray requires bottleneck version of 1.0 or '
                           'greater for rolling operations. Rolling '
                           'aggregation methods will use numpy instead'
diff --git a/xarray/tests/__init__.py b/xarray/tests/__init__.py
index 851e9f0b724..d31d9cfe56c 100644
--- a/xarray/tests/__init__.py
+++ b/xarray/tests/__init__.py
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 from __future__ import print_function
 import warnings
 from contextlib import contextmanager
-from distutils.version import StrictVersion
+from distutils.version import LooseVersion
 
 import numpy as np
 from numpy.testing import assert_array_equal
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@
 
 try:
     import bottleneck
-    if StrictVersion(bottleneck.__version__) < StrictVersion('1.0'):
+    if LooseVersion(bottleneck.__version__) < LooseVersion('1.0'):
         raise ImportError('Fall back to numpy')
     has_bottleneck = True
 except ImportError: