By Wendy Asman
West Coast Editor
“Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.”
—Raymond Chandler, Red Wind
In California, like the rest of North America the wind blows from west to east but when it wheels around and heads west they call it “The Witch Wind”.
From where we live, the closest fire is about 18 miles (29 km) distant and we’re not in an area full of brush and scrub. So we feel our home is safe. We live in Long Beach, right near the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties, which is 20 miles (32 km) south of Los Angeles, and 90 (145 km) miles north of San Diego.
But it’s very eerie here. The air is smoky. The sky has an uncanny yellow colour. The sun is a strange glowing red.
It’s hard to describe but it feels like you’re somewhere else other than earth.
As I write, California is at the mid-point of the annual Santa Ana winds that blow usually in the autumn. They blow really hot and dry from inland down to the coast. At this time of the year the temperature is starting to cool but the Santa Ana has pushed it up to plus 34 degrees.
The wind, which has surges of hurricane force, penetrates homes so that everything is covered with dust and dirt. Even our kitchen counters and our stove is covered with a new layer every couple of hours. It’s hard to keep up.
The Santa Ana is an expected visitor but not usually this bad. We’ve had a record dry year.
What is burning is all the scrub and bushes on the hillsides, as well as some trees (a lot of Eucalyptus that really go up quickly). There are many areas of hills and canyons that are covered with this scrub. In 2005 there were record rains during the rainy season and a lot of scrub grew. The past couple of years have been really dry, 2007 setting a record for lack of rainfall. This of course has dried out all that prolific scrub. To some extent the scrub is good as it holds the hillside intact during the rainy season, lessening the chances of mud/landslides.
(Are you wondering why people build houses in or near these hills? Either landslides in the rainy season or wildfires in the dry season!)
Too much scrub, especially close to housing developments, can spell disaster. The Santa Ana winds are predictable and early last week everyone knew they were coming and they pretty much started exactly when forecasters said they would. Fires are also expected and prepared for during these times. Gusts of wind have hit hurricane force in some local areas over the past couple of days, which of course really fans the fires. Like a similar blow that hits Europe, the Santa Anas come from inland and go out to the sea, unlike our regular winds that come from the sea and blow towards land.
According to Wikipedia:
The Santa Ana winds are warm, dry winds that characteristically appear in Southern California and Northern Baja California weather during autumn and early winter. Santa Anas are a type of föhn wind, the result of air pressure buildup in the high-altitude Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. This high energy wind spills out of the Great Basin and is pulled by gravity into the surrounding lowlands. The air circulates clockwise around the high pressure area bringing winds from the east and northeast to Southern California (the reverse of the westerly winds characteristic of the latitude). The air is then forced down the mountain slopes out towards the Pacific coast; the air mass is further heated by compression as it drops in altitude before reaching the Los Angeles Basin western San Diego County and Tijuana (Baja California) at typical speeds of 35 knots. The southern California coastal region gets some of its hottest weather of the year during autumn while Santa Ana winds are blowing. During Santa Ana conditions it is typically hotter along the coast than in the deserts and the humidity plummets to less than 15%. As the Santa Ana winds are channeled through the mountain passes they can approach hurricane force. The combination of wind, heat, and dryness turns the chaparral into explosive fuel for the infamous wildfires the region is known for. Wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds burned 721,791 acres (2,921 km²) in two weeks during October 2003. Santa Ana winds may get their name from the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County, the Santa Ana River or Santa Ana Canyon, along which the winds are particularly strong. There are also claims that the original form is Santana winds, from the Spanish vientos de Satán ("winds of Satan", Sanatanas being a rarer form of Satanás), and that this in turn is a translation of a native name in some unspecified language. In the Los Angeles Basin, the winds are often credited with the extremely high visibility experienced in the area during the winter, in contrast to the hazy, smoggy summers. The winds are also associated with some of the area's largest and deadliest wildfires, including the state's largest fire on record, the Cedar Fire, as well as the Laguna Fire, Old Fire, Esperanza Fire and the Great Fire of 1889.
The adverse pulmonary health impacts have been understood by local doctors for decades; the winds pick up and transmit grit, dust, pollens, mold spores and other irritants and allergens for considerable distances. Residents regularly notice a build-up of dust in their homes and grit on their properties during these periods, which are frequent during the winter.
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