"There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon..."
October 2, 2016 8:47 PM   Subscribe

"For non-Angelenos, the most LA season is that brief spring, when the days are 72 degrees and sunny. But for Angelenos, who have a far more intimate relationship with both nature and apocalypse than the 72-degrees-and-sunny crowd will ever allow, the most Los Angeles season is Santa Ana season." -- Adrian Glick Kudler, Something Uneasy in the Los Angeles Air

Playlist
Animal Logic - Winds of Santa Ana
Beach Boys - Santa Ana Winds
Steve Goodman - Santa Ana Winds
Survivor - Santa Ana Winds
The Bobs - Santa Ana Woman
The Wedding Present - Santa Ana Winds
Sons of Bill - Santa Ana Winds
Everclear - Santa Ana Wind

KCET's A Brief History of the Santa Ana Winds has some interesting historical photos

LA Weekly: 9 Awful Pieces of Writing About L.A.'s Legendary Santa Ana Winds

Is it really a sinus headache?
posted by Room 641-A (38 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Santa Barbara also used to have the equivalent of the Santa Ana, hot dry winds that came roarng down the canyons. the last time I felt one, I was down at the beach when I noticed a smudge of smoke in the mountains. By the time I reached home, it had become the conflagration known as the Painted Cave Fire, and had crossed the 101 freeway. It burned through Hope Ranch, and by the time the wind shifted, it had come within an hour of taking out the Mesa and maybe the heart of Santa Barbara.

Anyway, I think the real core of the effect of the Santa Ana is it's promise of fire. The knowledge that everything can burn,.
posted by happyroach at 9:01 PM on October 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


I thought I'd miss the Santa Anas when I left Los Angeles, after living most of my life expecting them around this time of year. I always hated them but I thought it'd be weird not to have them.

It's weird, in a good way. Turns out I really was dreading them and they weren't as romantic as I thought. I don't miss them at all.
posted by the marble index at 9:03 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Anyway, I think the real core of the effect of the Santa Ana is it's promise of fire. The knowledge that everything can burn.

Happyroach, I haven't experienced the Santa Anas but I know what you mean. Here in east coast Australia we'll get days of strong north westerly winds in the summer and I'll wake early in the morning and feel the humidity dropping and wonder what destruction we'll see by nightfall. With winds like that you know there will be fire, it's just a matter of where.
posted by kitten magic at 9:10 PM on October 2, 2016


Oh man, I thought this was gonna be about earthquake weather, but Santa Ana songs are A+ as well
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:23 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Santa Ana Winds also get a lyrical call-out in Randy Newman's intensely sarcastic "I Love L.A."
"Santa Ana winds blowin' hot from the north / And we was born to ride"

I actually had the experience when a lady friend gave me a ride to the International Airport, to live out the lyric "Rollin' down the Imperial Highway / With a big nasty redhead at my side" but it was not windy.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:48 PM on October 2, 2016 [5 favorites]




The first time I went to the LA area was in spring, for a wedding in Topanga Canyon. The weather forecast from our hotel room called for scarves and mittens. This thoroughly confused our New England selves. I attended the wedding in a sleeveless dress and sweated my ass off amongst the giant outdoor heaters. I was also confused at how cold the Pacific was, compared to our Rhode Island beaches. I truly adore LA, but the weather was not what I expected.
posted by Ruki at 10:28 PM on October 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, Mike Davis (Jstor) Free online
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:30 PM on October 2, 2016


L.A. native Tom Russell brings you Santa Ana Wind.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:31 PM on October 2, 2016


Let me contribute more awful writing about the Santa Ana.

In 1993 I had just finished college, having taken the extended tour, and through a strange sequence of circumstances, had found myself a job as a deckhand on a sea urchin dive boat. We worked out of Fish Harbor, on Terminal Island, picking the coast, or making longer trips out to San Clemente Island, or, less frequently, way up north to San Miguel Island, off Santa Barbara. The divers called San Miguel "Shark Park" and didn't really like going there. Usually the weather was in the divers' favor, and we stuck to the calmer, warmer waters on the coast (think PV peninsula (at one time there were good urchin reefs around the wreck of the Dominator)), or south to San Clemente. We spent a lot of time there.

One of my jobs as deckhand was to take the late night wheel watch so the divers could sleep. Usually there wasn't much happening. The boat wasn't a proper urchin dive boat; it was a 42 foot trawler the skipper pressed into double duty. (Joe was an aging diver trying to extend his career with other, less physically demanding catches.) A proper dive boat looks like a small lobster boat -- cabin in front, low working deck in back, with not much "freeboard," so it's easy for divers to get into and out of the water. It's not a V hull, it doesn't have a keel, it rides on top of the water, and is powered by a gasoline engine. So, fast. Get out, dive up the catch, race it back to the processor. Not us. We had a deep V, a bit of keel, and a steady reliable diesel. We chugged along at six or seven knots. Go out, spend a few days filling up the hold, roll back into Fish Harbor, fat and happy.

At the end of one those Clemente trips in January, I had the wheel. We'd loaded our catch into the hold, enjoyed our pot of Citation Stew and some beers and probably a joint, and after the CBS radio drama hour, the two divers went below. A short while later Joe joined them. The cabin was kind of a mess of dishes and food and gear, which can happen at the end of a trip.

"Stow this shit. Get me up if anything weird happens."

That was about midway between Clemente and Catalina. Nothing weird was happening. It was usually quiet there, maybe some traffic to or from San Diego. Maybe something from LA or Long Beach, but it was very late. With the autopilot there was basically nothing to do but scan the dark horizon for running lights, look up at the radar, check the autopilot against the compass, then do it again. About midway I'd have to reset the autopilot for Angel's Gate, the entrance to the harbor. Every once in a while, get up, make a cup of coffee (pourover using a big Melitta two cup plastic filter holder and filter, hot water via a kettle and a three burner marine stove behind the Captain's chair), while still scanning and comparing from back there and trying not to spill. That night it was flat and glassy, as January can often be, and even the coffee was uneventful.

It's 25 miles or so between Catalina and the mainland, depending on where you land. Maybe five miles into that leg I got up to take a piss out back over the rail. It was flat and glassy as it had been most of the way. I leaned my thighs into the rail and released my coffee and beer, the diesel growling, the tang of the catch swirling around. Our urchins were stuffed into picking bags (think steel hoola hoops with nets attached) and spilled out of the hold and were piled across the deck. It had been a beautiful trip, and we were going to get paid a lot of money for it.

Zipping up I caught the slightest scent of land mingling with the urchin tang. It's not uncommon to smell land on the way in, but usually only when much closer. In a moment I caught it again, dry and deserty. Dirt. Dry dirt. Maybe some burnt vegetation, like Laurel or Toyon. Not like how dry soil can smell after the first few raindrops. The opposite. The ocean after the first few earthdrops. Sere. Next came a little swell, and the deep slow boat heavy with the catch rose up, settled. Then again, up and settled. Then a bit of a slow lean left and then another right and another rise from forward to get over. A little wash of a warm breeze from ahead. More land smell.

Hunh.

Back inside I did my scan, did it again, everything was fine, but now the boat rose and fell meeting the swell coming from the north (coming from LA Harbor, if you have been keeping track), rose and fell, now comes a slap against aluminum and a bit of a high note from the diesel. We settle and roll, up, down slap diesel whine. Again higher faster. Up, down settle roll slap whine. Up down settle roll slap whine growl.

I head back outside to toss my coffee over the side because if this keeps up, it's officially weird, and a fresh cup won't look good to Joe. I'm awash in land smell and wind from the north. It's been ten minutes since I took that piss over the rail.

Back inside it's on. The slaps are beginning to splash up onto the bow. The diesel joining through several cycles of growl as we crawl up a wave and settle and roll back down before we bottom out and climb again to another slap. Slam! Down we go and back up again. Slam.

Joe comes up from the below, rubs his eyes. Joe is tall, and lean, with big goofy ears and no chin. His skin is deeply tanned, all the way to his bones, and his short blonde hair is sun streaked and greasy at the end of the trip.

"Well this is pretty weird. Better make me some coffee."

Which I set about doing, wedging myself against the doorway and the stove as the boat ground into the waves coming from the north, getting the kettle to boil, resting the red Melitta filter on Joe's cup, spilling a couple of plastic scoops of ground coffee into it, finally pouring the boiling water over it as everything else on the boat crashes around us.

"Weren't you supposed to stow all this shit?" Joe said.

"It was so flat. I thought it could wait till morning."

"This shit comes up whenever. It's just the Santa Ana, but it'll make a mess."
posted by notyou at 10:40 PM on October 2, 2016 [31 favorites]


Oh man, I thought this was gonna be about earthquake weather, but Santa Ana songs are A+ as well--Hermione Granger

Well, there's been a small earthquake about every hour for the past two days south of Los Angeles that has scientists a bit nervous.

More on topic, Wikipedia says this about Santa Anta winds:
The winds carry Coccidioides immitis and Coccidioides posadasii spores into nonendemic areas,[19][20] a pathogenic fungus that causes Coccidioidomycosis ("Valley Fever"). Symptomatic infection (40 percent of cases) usually presents as an influenza-like illness with fever, cough, headaches, rash, and myalgia (muscle pain).[21] Serious complications include severe pneumonia, lung nodules, and disseminated disease, where the fungus spreads throughout the body. The disseminated form of Coccidioidomycosis can devastate the body, causing skin ulcers, abscesses, bone lesions, severe joint pain, heart inflammation, urinary tract problems, meningitis, and often death.[22]

Yikes, my comment is filled with dread, disease, and danger, so here's a kitten.
posted by eye of newt at 11:21 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Supplemental music:

Bad Religion - Los Angeles is Burning (Santa Anas get a mention in the first verse)

I seriously hate Santa Anas. Before the existence of Zyrtec and Claritin, it was a miserable time for me. Now it's just itchy and gross.

Also, I just want my cool fall season so I can bake pies and make stews. My house has no AC. But given the direction climate change is going, that's probably something we'll need to fix in the next few years. :\
posted by offalark at 11:24 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I had mixed experiences with the Santa Anas. Occasionally, I got allergies, headaches, etc. But for the most part? I just got warmer.

I've lived in Seattle for 12 years now and the Santa Ana winds are on my list of things I really miss.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:33 PM on October 2, 2016


eye of newt, that LA times article was bloody terrifying. I really needed the kitten.

Earthquakes and Santa Ana winds would be a really bad combo.
posted by kitten magic at 11:37 PM on October 2, 2016




I'm impressed. No Steely Dan or Joan Didion (both great, don't get me wrong). Great post!

I am severely affected these winds at work sometimes. They can blow people over. Really.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:02 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


notyou: that was terrific!
posted by persona au gratin at 1:06 AM on October 3, 2016


The SA winds for me have always meant fires. Giant fires. Like I couldn't imagine growing up in the Midwest. We're talking 200' flames and a fire 15 miles long. They destroy neighborhoods and wreck my lungs.

But! With climate change, I've had to start worrying about fires long before SA wind season in the fall. So I associate them less with fires.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:10 AM on October 3, 2016


(Just posting to out myself as one of the other dozen or so owners of the Animal Logic record.)
posted by uberchet at 6:31 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Growing up, it was the rare Hallowe'en that we didn't trick or treat under the glow of a fire raging in the hills around our house in the San Fernando Valley.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:38 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I've long been a bit fascinated about how many locally-named mountain winds of ill-repute occur throughout the world and the many legends that spring up around them. Southern California's Santa Anas are among the most famous but you will find examples all over the planet.

In my part of the world we have the Williwaw. And around the world there are dozens of named föhn winds, many of which have their own associated set of myths. Something about them seems to stimulate our imagination and drive us to create stories to explain them.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:39 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I too came here primarily to cite/ quote/ link the Animal Logic song.

If you don't know it, give it a listen, upt top.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:42 AM on October 3, 2016


In the Middle east, it's called a khamseen.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:52 AM on October 3, 2016


My last experience with the Santa Anas was climbing up out of the LA Basin through a long, steep pass with fierce headwinds in an old VW Beetle. It made for a very slow start to my escape back to Texas...
posted by jim in austin at 7:17 AM on October 3, 2016


Aw, Santa Anas for me will always mean hiding on the lee side of classroom buildings during recess because playing in them was so annoying. It occupies the same part of my mind as well-thumbed Ramona books and the carpet in the school library. And then later Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler on the porch.
posted by dame at 7:21 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is the Chandler quote:

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas 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. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

posted by dame at 7:22 AM on October 3, 2016 [9 favorites]


(Which is in the LA Weekly link and I can't read but I don't think it's awful so screw you, LA Weekly!)
posted by dame at 7:23 AM on October 3, 2016


Since I got trumped on the Animal Logic linkage, here's a possibly even more obscure one.

The lead-off story in Twisted Tales* #1 (Pacific Comics, 1982) was entitled "Infected", written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Richard Corben. It's written in that rarest of styles, a noir-ish second-person voice narration, and deals in a small way with the physio-psycho-logical effects on some persons of the Santa Ana winds.
The natives called them Viento De Fuego -- 'firewind'. South of Arroyo Grande they were known a Santana Diablo or most commonly the Santa Ana. Whatever you called them, they blew incessantly, moaning through the canyons gusting across the plains. Mix them with the ions in the air and they caused -- for some unfortunates -- migraines.

You are one of the unfortunates.

"Nuts."

Your name is Oscar Felps. Your head hurts. Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. You're sick of this crummy job . . . this crummy wind . . .
OK, so Bruce Jones is no Ray Chandler. Continuing: Felps is a collector for a credit company. He makes a call:
The ceaseless wind whips at your head. The woman's twisted lips form an endless stream of disconnected ravings. The child's wail rises higher than the screaming Santa Ana, tearing at the pit of your guts. Tearing . . . tearing . . . tearing . . .
Things don't go at all well for him.

Here's a look.

-------------------------------
* An attempted revival of the 1950s EC style of horror comics with a bit more adult sensibilities that lasted about a year.
posted by Herodios at 7:55 AM on October 3, 2016


(Which is in the LA Weekly link and I can't read but I don't think it's awful so screw you, LA Weekly!)

They like the Chandler and Didion descriptions of the winds! They just say (fairly, in my opinion) that those well-crafted sentences have inspired a lot of lackluster imitations.
posted by andrewesque at 8:08 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


LA Weekly says . . . well-crafted [works] have inspired a lot of lackluster imitations

Yeah. That kind of thing never happens in Los Angeles.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:45 AM on October 3, 2016


It's been years since I was in SoCal long enough to experience a Santa Ana. That's one of those things about SoCal (my home stomping ground) that you learn to unironically miss, like the constant traffic and smog, the legendary yawningly huge interstates and the never-boring sights off to the sides of them, endless warm (not humid!) sunny days, forlorn scruffy palm trees, In'n'Out Burgers and Bob's Big Boy, PCH, and empanadas.
posted by blucevalo at 8:58 AM on October 3, 2016


I do love the silly romanticism that the Santa Anas inspire, but I know that they have a way of working on your brain.

And hell sometimes they're just really damn scary. 4-5 years ago we had the strongest set I've ever lived through and had a long damn night of winds feeling like they were ripping my house off the pilings.

Trashed my yard something fierce:
http://i.imgur.com/5p2EM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/OHVpU.jpg (that ficus pot is easily 80 lbs and the winds just tipped it right off the porch)
http://i.imgur.com/m1Ul6.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QL2d0.jpg (those trees normally are full of leaves and keep the neighbors at bay. It was like a half foot deep of leaves across the yard and yeah, never found the awning)

Worse part of it all was that was the same night my beloved goon, Cookie the Wonder Dog, went in for her emergency spinal surgery (warning - staples) because she ruptured a spinal disk and was becoming paralyzed. The Surgical Hospital lost power, but their emergency generators kicked on and they saw her through the surgery (more recent happier photo).

That was a very very long night of me trying to keep my fear and emotions in check.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:01 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's amazing how nervous the winds make you. My trees thrash wildly, and at night the palm tree by our bedroom makes so much shushing/whipping noise we can't actually hear all the other noises, like the gates blowing open or a quarter of an enormous Jacaranda tree falling on the neighbor's lawn (or, another night, another giant branch falling into the lemon tree), stuff we thought was properly restrained blowing across the yard. The palm trees shed husks when it's windy, and they can be 5-6 feet long and 10+ pounds, and they crash/thud/thunk in the street and at night look like animals or sometimes people laying on the ground, especially if the wind catches them right and they move a little bit. Bits of tree branches and debris will skitter down the street. We have a lot of pine trees in my neighborhood and there's huge tumbleweeds of dead needles.

Everything is staticky, and gritty. It's difficult to sleep well, and if you have AC you really have to run a humidifier just to have enough moisture for it to cool off anything, and then you're back to shocking the dog and crackling visibly in your sheets in the dark. If you don't have AC (preferably running right next to your head) you can hear everything blowing, and then pausing for long enough to startle you back awake when it starts again.

I grew up in tornado country and am accustomed to the nervousness/barometric anxiety that happens when fronts are coming in, and it feels like that. Except you can track a storm front, and the news is completely consumed with LIVE DOPPLERTRAK 9000, whereas here in LA the news websites sometimes don't even bother updating the forecast daily because "same as yesterday" isn't worth the effort. Sometimes Dark Sky or TWC will indicate it's going to be windy, but for the most part either your shit is blowing over on the porch or it's not, and that's how you know. It's weird and alien, and you're always waiting for the smoke smell.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:29 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I used to lie by myself in bed on the upper floor of an old wood-framed house in Boulder when my partner was back home visiting her folks, listening to the chinook whining and roaring in the eaves, and then drift off to sleep as gust after gust hit the house so hard it made the springs sway and creak beneath me.
posted by jamjam at 11:37 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


As a kid in southern California, the Santa Anas were always a fascinating, invigorating experience. Living in a place with boring, unchanging, mostly-horrible weather, experiencing weather worth talking about was a magical thing. The Santa Anas represented the world turned upside down. They were fantastic; an excuse for not going to bed. When the wind came upon the heels of the time-change, it was even more exciting. Wondering through a pitch-black school yard at 5:30pm, surrounded by ecstatic trees and astonishingly warm air was the highlight of my childhood. I've explored a lot of strange and unusual places, but none have quite matched the visceral experience of a dark late-afternoon Santa Ana playground.

With the arguable exception of a few specific museums, the Santa Anas are almost certainly the best thing that exists in Los Angeles. Claiming otherwise is genuinely, though with no small amount of pettiness, the thing that turned me against Joan Didion as a teenager.
posted by eotvos at 12:34 PM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


That "bad writing" bit from Beverly Hills 90210 is priceless!

I lived in (west) LA for the better part of a decade. I've never made much attempt to hide my disdain for that city, even though I appreciate its geography and geology and ecology and so on. But living blissfully close to the beach, Santa Anas mostly meant that we got to experience the disgusting air that the eastern edges of the LA basin deal with on a daily basis. A Santa Ana on the coast meant looking out over the ocean and seeing a dirty brown stripe of filth and particulates suspended for miles along the horizon. I appreciate that perspective.

The seemingly perfect straight-line persistence is what I most remember about Santa Anas. In 2012, there was a significant shift in the usual direction of the winds and they came in from a much more northerly direction than usual. The trees in our neighborhood weren't used to being pushed so hard from that side, so many of them gave up the ghost. Including the melaluca that came crashing into our living room through the kitchen window as if inviting itself to dinner.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:46 PM on October 3, 2016


Just posting to out myself as one of the other dozen or so owners of the Animal Logic record

Saw the tour.
posted by thelonius at 3:14 AM on October 4, 2016


Just last night I peeked out my windows wondering if the sprinklers had gone off at the wrong time, nope just the loud rustling of all the palm leaves clattering in the wind. The fallen palm husks are indeed everywhere after a big gust comes through; I've always referred to them as 'flayed horse'.
posted by sweetmarie at 11:56 AM on October 4, 2016


« Older "Shadows form in our ghostly past; Ho! Ho! young...   |   Neville Marriner (1924 - 2016) Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments