It doesn't bother me.

Colin
Montebello, California

Didion captured in that passage a proto-Mike Davis sense of Los Angeles's own apocalyptic self-conception. The Santa Anas are symbolic of that mentality, because they take the defining feature of Southern Californian life, namely its generally warm, dry winter climate, and take it to a violent extreme. And that's what Southern California is all about to Didion, Davis, and that tradition of writing (In Hollywood think: Day of the Locust, Them, Falling Down) -- the very things that make the country and the region great are taken to such extremes that that become horrific. That's what Southern California is all about, for which the Santa Anas are a metonym.

She was trying to be Raymond Chandler. "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." That's from "Red Wind.

I think it is odd because it is so dry as opposed to sea breeze. That implies you are living in Santa Monica, not the Valley.

There is also the Raymond 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."

Southern California weather is usually so boring that I think writers go a little crazy describing anything different.

I believe Didion (and her husband) used to live in Malibu, which is nothing but canyons. Every year they lose some houses to fire in the late summer and fall, and to mudslides in the winter and spring. The El Nino of--when was that, 1994?--took out a lot of houses on the coast.

Given that track record, their Los Angeles must have seemed a little ephemeral and shakey...

I'm with you, Kevin. Yep, it's too dry and you feel itchy and unpleasant, but it sure beats the hell out of a New England winter.

It's Didion being Didion. Perfectly healthy for you as long as you don't take it seriously.

I don't think I've ever read anything by Didion. Is this typical of her narrative style?

I live in northern California, but I had to evacuate my wife from her workplace (the Lawrence Hall of Science) during the Oakland hills fire. We get those same kinds of winds in October, and it means fire.

To me, it isn't the wind itself that has any emotional effect, rather it's the worry of just what's going to happen. Most of California is a tinderbox in October, and when you get hot, dry 60 mph winds blowing the wrong way (from inland toward the sea), you know trouble is coming.

I dunno, watching planes land and take off the wrong direction is a little dramatic. But agree with you, completely, Keven. Over the top. Come on lady, how long have you lived here? I think the sand storms of Iraq are much more dramatic.

Ya, that's never been my experience of the Santa Anas. Living in Claremont, they were intense winds that sometimes knocked out the power and always cleared out the smog. I used to go to the top of any nearby hill to see the clear view of the valley.

Raymond Chandler must be awfully popular. I was about to quote Red Wind, but Mark and Peter Sherer beat me to it.

Here's an excerpt from Chandler's buddy, Erle Stanley Gardner, describing pre-santana conditions in "Double or Quits"

"You could feel the east wind in the air. People were nervous and jumpy. My skin felt dry to the touch. The membranes of my nose seemed to have been dried out in an oven. The air was unusually calm and still."

I found the winds to be annoying more than anything. It would blow over your cup of coffee, your hat down the ramp, dirt into your eyes, make working on a ladder near impossible...

Alot like Oklahoma winds except warmer.

The few years I lived in Korea Town had me worrying about things other than the Santa Ana winds.

Not all Santa Ana winds are created equal. Like Joe Buck, I was in Berkeley the day the Oakland Hills fire started, and those winds were unusual. I don't have much Southern California experience but I think Santa Anas have the potential to be the kind of winds Didion described, even though they usually don't reach that potential.

The only thing I've ever read of Didion's is an essay on her life with migranes. The essay does a wonderful job of catching the intensity of the brain killer, but now I wonder if the Santa Ana's are this big of a deal to her, what are her headaches really like?

Have you considered that maybe she wrote this before air conditioning was so widespread? This passage is from 1968.

I live in the Bay Area with no a/c - and most of my other habitat (Mills college for the last two years) also has no a/c. Because of our foggy summers, no a/c is only onerous in September-October, when we have those miserable heat waves after six months of no rain. Last autumn I was particularly edgy and gloomy about it. It was hot, smoggy, dry, and yes we did have some east winds that made us all nervous (although we associate hot still weather with earthquakes around here - makes us edgy, even though they've said there's no real correlation - natives will say of a hot dry late October day with ugly pollution: it's earthquake weather)

THis year we've had several early, cool rains so I am not so worried (although it's back to being hot and clear today)

Before universal a/c, the whole Santa Ana thing must have been much harder to take.

I suggest A/C.

Civilization saved.

Where do I collect my medal?

Wild fires, mud slides, earthquakes, and you people think a little snow is a big deal?

There's a long artistic tradition of the Southern California Apocalypse: Nathanael West, Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Mike Davis, etc...

According to journalist Mike Davis, who became L.A.'s favorite prophet of calamity with his foreboding local bestseller "Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster," Southern California is widely seen as "the doom capital of the universe."

He wrote in 1998, "The destruction of Los Angeles has been the central theme or dominating image in more than a hundred and fifty novels, short stories, and films." Davis counts 49 fictional local nuclear attacks, 28 earthquakes, six floods, and 10 hordes of invading creatures that have helped brand "the City of Angels as a theme park for Armageddon."

Davis himself can't resist trumpeting such alarming but trivial threats to residents as tornadoes, man-eating coyotes, and killer bees.

I should have written: I could feel Santa Ana ominously pushing at my back I could feel its anger whipping around my torso, searching for momentary imbalance with which to throw me mercilessly off my precarious A-framed steed unto the dusty tarmac howling its dry whispy yuks past my ears as I tended to my injured ego and scraped knee. Everything went wrong during those times, more often than not the beer was warm and the women cold.

Weather affects different people differently. Two weeks of continuous rain can bring depression to some -- others just reach for the umbrella and rain shoes and don't think any more about it. Cloudy weather, wind, thunderstorms -- all can affect mood significantly, but not in all people. It's not surprising that artists (or people who have no use for Charts and Graphs) are more sensitive to changes in the physical environment.

I grew up in the Four Corners area. Though the winds aren't hot ones, spring sandstorms across the Navajo Reservation are FAR drier than anything you pampered Angelinos are.

Or, hell, in California, go up to Death Valley in the spring.

Having lived in Malibu for a few years (until a couple of months ago) I can say that when the Santa Anas start blowing, it's freaky, but mainly because you know how quickly the fires can start in the canyons and sweep down to the coast.

I'm generally pretty sensitive to this kind of thing, though, and I've never felt the effects she describes. If there is an effect, some associate it with the fact that those kinds of winds carry more positive ions than the usual on shore coast breezes.

But I'm with Kevin on this one, though as one commenter said, this kind of thing affects some more than others, and artists tend to be pretty highly strung and tuned in.

I now live in the San Juan Islands, and I have to say I like the weather here a heck of a lot better. But I may still be suffering from what my wife calls "Post Traumatic Drought Syndrome," after a dozen years in southern California.

Listen Kevin, if you'd have lived anywhere near the Tujunga Canyon for as long as I did, you'd agree. The snapping of static electricity was bad enough, but the cats and dogs would run out and get run over, mom would get drunk and my older sis managed to get herself Goodbar'd six weeks before she turned 21, in a windstorm and she sure as heck wasn't looking for it.

NE winters are a matter of attitude more than anything else. Once you stop cringing and take a deep breath of that cold crisp air, it's invigorating as hell. It goes on too long, is all. Two months would be fun, three tolerable, but the last weeks of a four-month NE winter are hard on the spirit, for sure. Thank God the days start getting longer starting in late December, usually before real winter weather has even completely set in.

O'course, it also depends on whether you're near the coastal humidity or well inland. More important, whether you're stuck in the insufferable city and suburbs, where local authorities play chicken with snow removal, hoping the white stuff will melt so they don't have to spend money plowing it and there's no place to put it, or out in the country, where the air is mostly dry and wonderful even in severe cold, and local authorities don't even think about trying to cheat a little on snow removal.

Here in the rural Vermont countryside, unlike the Boston suburbs, I have no need for snow tires or four-wheel drive. The roads are clear down to the pavement (or dirt) from edge to edge within minutes to an hour of the end of the snowfall.

Even better, the snow stays white and clean until spring, the freeze-melt slush cycle is almost unheard-of, and you don't have to watch out for patches of "yellow snow." Heh.

Each to his own, but I'll take the glory of NE seasons over California's non-seasons any day.

Is Didion being overdramatic?

Yes.

I'm a native of SoCal, now living in Berkeley---and the winds on the day of the Oakland Hills fire made it feel like I was back home when the Santa Anas are kicking up.

But anyone who gets spooky vibes off the warm winds is silly. I do believe that those who equate the winds with disaster are picking up on history that has now been amplified by runaway growth.

I still have vivd childhood memories of the amazing Hollwood Hills fire of 1961 (we lived about three miles from Griffith Park). 200 homes were lost in what had been the worst such fire in SoCal history---but back then, you still had farms in the San Fernando Valley and relatively few people living in risky areas. Since then, you've had staggering development from the Tejon Ranch to the Mexican border, and a lot of it in terrain that could (and does) go up in a ball of flames each time the Santa Anas kick up.

So now, each year, somewhere in So-Cal, the destructive fires that had been rare occurrances with the Santa Anas happen with the regularity of mail deliveries. They make the Big Fire of '61 seem almost quaint by comparison.

As much as I admire Raymond Chandler, I think Joan Didion is a genius. Her "Year of Magical Thinking" was imho, apart from all the awards it won, one of the finest works of non-fiction in many, many years. She's not, of course, to everyone's taste, but the NY Times said of her:
"There hasn't been another American writer of Joan Didion's quality since Nathaniel West."
Jonathon Raban of the Observer likens her to Swift & Voltaire, commenting:
"Didion the novelist & Didion the moralist work hand in hand to create work that combines intense imagination with extraordinary argumentative force."
John Gill of TimeOut:
"I doubt I'll read prose any more beautiful than (Didion's)...the writing and the message scorch like dry ice."
While the New Statesman said of her:
"No one depicts place or passion or dislocation with more accuracy; no one can move us more deeply with the staccato repetition of the crazy facts of personal-political life than Joan Didion."

Fantastic writer of both fiction & non-fiction. Deeply subversive, darkly funny, deceptively plain-spoken, with the ability to create images & scenes that linger in your mind like distant, deeply personal memories.

Apart from her skills as a writer though, her comments about Santa Ana winds are not without some basis in fact. There are several studies in the field of enviromental psychology & behaviour linking dry warm winds such as the foehn in Switzerland, the sharav in Israel & the Santa Ana in California with increases in crime, murder & assault. While, as far as I recall, the increases aren't spectacular, they are significant & far more conclusive than those widely & anecdotally cited between full moon & erratic behaviours.

Wild fires, mud slides, earthquakes, and you people think a little snow is a big deal?

I grew up in Temple City, just southeast of Pasadena. We weren't in the immediate vicinity of either a hillside or chaparral, so like most of Southern California, we didn't worry about either mudslides or wildfires. That leaves earthquakes, and I didn't even feel one until I was 14 years old (the 1987 Whittier quake).

Natural disasters in SoCal make a lot of headlines, but they affect a relative few. I can honestly say that my family has never been affected by any of those things. As a Chicago resident now, it's miserable every time it snows. Weather/disaster wise, I'll take my chances with SoCal every time.

As for Didion, there's not point in my where I can remember a period of Santa Ana winds specifically. Sure, I remember living through them, but it just meant that it was warmer (and we didn't have AC). No weird vibes, or restlessness. She's being completely over dramatic. I do, on the other hand, remember smog, and L.A. has come a LONG way in air quality since I was a kid, and first stage alerts were seemingly routine.

I think her descriptions of the Santa Ana are realistic observation. My mother would cry her way through them. Migraines.

Susie

That's one of my favorite quotes about SoCal and the Santa Anas. I, too, have lived here most of my life and, to me, that description nails what they are and how the town feels. It's electric, on the edge, kind of feeling where you just don't know what's to come. That said, here in Atwater Village, we had stiff winds on Saturday night and absolutely not a stir since then. It's weird.

Janet Fitch`s White Oleander also opened with a descriptive passage of the Santa Ana winds. Can anyone else find it?

Kevin:

personally i enjoyed "The White Album" more. enjoyable essays about The Getty Museum and the Governor's mansion while Gerry Brown refused to live there.

"Slouching towards Bethlehem" did not age as well though the chapter on the music scene (the doors - mamas and papas) and the essay on migraines are still worth reading as is the one about working in advertisement improving her writing ability - enforce brevity with effect.

Since you live behind the Orange Curtain, you have no soul and would not understand.

But let me ask you this though, have you ever experienced earthquake weather?

I lived in SoCal (Santa Barbara and Ventura) for 13 years, after 18 in the Bay Area, before moving to Oregon two years ago. If there is a weather phenomonon that is distinctly SoCal (mudslides aren't strictly a weather phenomenon), it's the Santa Ana. I suspect Didion played up the narrative a little to glorify the phenomemon, but frankly, days in which there was a Santa Ana were notably different that days there wasn't, not just becuase of the weather but the way it affected people. It's like the way people talk about a full moon. Can't sleep, get restless, bad allergies... maybe it's psychosomatic because I always read and heard so much about Santa Anas, but it sure felt like a big deal while I lived down there. In a weird sort of way, I miss them.

Yes Didion was using poetic license. I get irritated during the Santa Anas because every stinking leaf in town blows in to my yard. Right now the smell of smoke is permeating my house because I'm a few miles from the Santiago Canyon fire. I think I'll have a drink and howl or something.

That's certainly the way it felt during the Oakland Hills fire. Scary strong winds coming down from the hills, scorching hot even when the fires were elsewhere. I suspect the observations about A/C are on the mark: try riding out the Santa Ana in a hot, airless house.

Of course, the giant plume of smoke over Oakland certainly added to the oppressive feel, with still-smoking strips of eucalyptus bark raining down from the sky, a mile away from the fire.

"Burn baby burn."

Urban Meterology: Meeting Weather Needs in the Urban Community, Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meterological Services and Research, FCM-R22-2004, January 2004:

p.11

A considerable number of studies have been devoted to the possible direct influence of weather and climate on mental processes. Studies examined the relationship between year-to-year shifts in temperature and violent and property crime rates in the U.S. A positive relation between temperature and serious and deadly assault was observed, even after poverty and population age effects were statistically controlled. Similarly, other aggressive behavior such as spousal abuse and road rage has been examined with similar findings. Violence, a decreased stress tolerance, and ambient temperature are curvilinearly related. Specifically, ambient temperature was directly associated with the frequency of violence through the mid-80s (Fahrenheit). Beyond this point, however, further increases in temperature were associated with a decreasing incidence of violence.

Restlessness of school children is another condition that has been observed as having a meteorotropic influence. It was found that children are more restless during warm events than during cold events. For example, school children were found to be more restless right before a thunderstorm. This unrest was due to the thermal stresses (heat and humidity), which affect the inefficient thermoregulatory system of young children.

The Weather of Southwest California: A Climate Overview, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, San Diego Weather Forecast Office:

p.12

Santa Ana winds occur mainly during fall and winter and are most common during December. Summer events are rare. A reasonably strong event can produce sustained wind speeds of 30 to 40 mph with gusts over 60 mph. During exceptional events the top gusts can exceed 100 mph. The strongest winds usually occur during the night and morning due to the absence of a competing sea breeze.

The impacts of these winds are numerous. There is always a high fire danger during these events. Trees and power lines are toppled, leading to property damage and power outages. High profile vehicles are at risk of being blown over. Turbulence and low level wind shear adversely affect aircraft, while strong winds and associated waves can present great danger to boaters.

Fall events can bring hot weather as well as strong winds. Most high temperature records in coastal California have occurred during a hot Santa Ana. Legend and lore have sprung from these uncomfortable conditions. Early Mexican residents called them los vientos del diablo - the devil winds. It is a strange time for residents near the coast because their mild climate turns into the Sahara for a time. Fires increase, crime seems to go up, and numerous health conditions worsen, such as allergies. Some claim earthquakes are more likely during this “earthquake weather.” Like the time during a full moon, it just seems that more weird things happen.

Apparently more than folklore, somewhat suggestive, but hardly definitive. Would like to skim the studies on this.

I can agree with Didion's passage. I also grew up right next to the Big Tujunga Canyon, in the hills north east of Los Angeles (about 21 years total living there), and when the Santa Ana winds blew, the energy changed. From where I lived in some years you would just look up into the nearby mountains and watch the fires, and one year they got down to across the street from my house.

The extremely dry, electric, wind isn't really like anything else I've experienced. It's wild - literally.

My gripe with these winds is that they *always* seem to take out one or two of my potted plants. Without fail, my favorite plants will get sand-blasted, dessicated, and hurled in some arbitrary direction, mangled and uprooted, facing another long rehab, only to be battered all over again next year. Damn you Santa Anas! Damn you to Hell!

Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorological Services and Research

I've lived in Southern California (Pasadena, now West Los Angeles) my entire life as well and would generally agree that the Santa Ana winds aren't especially troublesome. But the legends about the winds seem a little more real during more extreme instances.

First consider that the common wisdom about these winds developed long before air conditioning, when people spent far more time outside and exposed to the elements, and when far more of the Southland was undeveloped land (wide open areas of dirt, scrub brush, or agriculture).

While winds themselves can reach hurricane force strength (70mph) in some extreme instances, it's not uncommon for the winds to blow four times harder than normal winds - hard enough to create a din of rattling windows, shutters, and trees. It's little more than a nuisance in a modern, insulated home in the middle of the suburbs where everything is covered by concrete or landscaping - quite another when my father was a child growing up in rural Southern California.

Also, there's no denying that the winds can be dry and irritating. I'm not sure whether there's any truth to the claims that the Santa Ana desert winds contain more positive ions than normal, but supposedly positive ions agitate people, as opposed to the negative ions you found in ocean breezes (which are pumped into Las Vegas casinos) that supposedly calm people down and help to remove irritants like smoke and pollen from the air.

I doubt there is much/any scientific basis to the belief that the Santa Anas are associated with spikes in violent crime, but I can tell you it was widely believed to be true when I was growing up. True or not, common conceptions like these shape your reality and perception.

Similarly, there doesn't need to be a scientific correlation between Santa Ana conditions and earthquakes for people to draw a psychological connection from positive correlations.

For example, the Northridge earthquake in 1994 was preceded by very extreme Santa Ana winds here in West Los Angeles. I was a student at UCLA at the time and it was not only unseasonably hot for January but also freakish dry. The air was so dry - like nothing I had experienced before or since - that it actually became painful to breath through your nose. Some of us in the dorms (including myself) even experienced nose bleeds. Because we had no air conditioning, we resorted to soaking sheets in water and hanging them from our lofts to help add moisture to the air.

Supposedly the winds also make it harder for people with Asthma, allergies, and other breathing disorders.

As of this moment, the air in the house is still hot and the air is still unusually dry (despite the fact that it's cooled off a bit outside), my sinuses are dry and irritated, and I still have a light residual headache that has dogged me for most of the day.

Hey just read the words: "The maid sulks...My only neighbor..." Do you have a maid? Do you have only one neighbor? If not, you probably don't share Didion's views.

Being a transplant to SoCal, I have noticed the obsession and find it a bit hysterical. Although, everyone out here is much more sensitive to weather than a born and raised Midwesterner.

I lived in Southern California for 27 years -- many different places, from the beach to Needles. For the past 34 years I've lived in Sacramento.

My experience with Santa Ana winds was like Didion's description. An uncomfortable electric feeling came with the heat, and my stress level always seemed to rise with the prickly sensation of dry wind incessantly hitting my skin. The dogs got nervous. The air seemed "strange".

Joan Didion was born and grew up in Sacramento, and we have here what is known as the Delta Breeze. Very hot, dry summers are the norm, but on most summer days the evening brings in cool ocean air from San Francisco and the relief is instant and welcome. Perhaps having experienced this for her formative years, Didion was more dramatically impressed with the Santa Ana phenomenon, where the change is mostly unwelcome, than someone living there forever.

Kevin, the term you are looking for is, courtesy of one of the Left's great thinkers, "wanker of the day".

It is irresponsible of me to speculate how we might better fight these fires with troops and equipment now in Iraq?

Hmmhhm, Santa Anas don't bother me and don't bother Kevin. They do bother Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler. Maybe the latter pair are more sensitive artists than the former pair?

Yes and no.

Perhaps it's felt mostly by the non-native Californian (and the creative writer). It's a phenomenon felt around the world, though. Mediteranean people fret over the "mistral" and those around the Alps of the "Fon". It's the combination of constant high wind, extreme dryness and the sudden onslaught of heat. (uhm, except I think the Fon can also be cold?...)

Santa Ana's arrive in the Spring and Fall when most of us who've moved to Southern California are thinking "fresh Spring rains" or "crisp Autumn days".

The funny thing about living our here in Joshua Tree is that our temps drop during Santa Ana's while yours on the coast soar. (We didn't get above 60 today while it was 95 downtown LA) When I lived in LA, I mistakenly thought (as many do) that the winds were hot because they came from the desert.

The Santa Ana's drive me nuts.

Peter Shearer: "Southern California weather is usually so boring ..."

That's why people flocked there a century ago.

Having lived through two hurricanes -- including the category-5 Hurricane Iniki (170 mph winds with 200 mph gusts) in September 1992 -- and a particularly awful monsoon period 18 months ago, where we received over 80 inches of rain in 42 straight days of often-torrential downpours, I can assure you that exciting weather can also be rather hazardous to one's well-being. I prefer my weather to be staid and mellow.

You need to get away from the computer screen and get out a little more, Kevin. Just kidding. I hope you are safe from the CA firestorms. I'll take a Midwestern blizzard any day, over those infernal things...

I agree with Mike, who said she was inspired by Chandler, and pushed the rhetoric a little, as writers do. But not that far. I just posted a picture I took Sunday afternoon of the sky in Ventura County.

Yes, it is orange. No lie there.

This is one of the reasons Didion always annoyed me. Her typical essay begins along the lines of, "It was 1969, and I was having a migraine". Then it goes on to talk about momentous affairs of the world as seen through the pain-dimmed eyes of a tres sensitif woman with a migraine, and besides, the Santa Ana winds have caused the maid to chant Mexican voodoo spells, and will someone TURN THAT RADIO DOWN, Mother is TRYING TO REST here....

Pullllllease.

"Rollin down the Imperial Highway
With a big nasty redhead at my side
Santa Ana wind blowin hot from the north
And we was born to ride."

Geez, put the top down, Joanie. And fix the 8 track.

I just posted a picture I took Sunday afternoon of the sky in Ventura County. Yes, it is orange.

That's nothing. The sky in Chicago *at night* is orange.

Air conditioning. Didion writes in the pre-air-conditioning era.

We came out to California many years ago during a summer Santa Ana. Ordinarily, the most surprising thing about California is how cold it is even during the summer. We'd never gone west without having to buy a sweatshirt or jacket while we were there. That year, though, the Santa Ana pushed temps to 100 or so. And my sister-in-law's A/C broke. The compressor just quit. I seem to remember brown outs -- but that could be just memory wilting the lily -- and floor fans struggling to keep up.

Didion was old enough to have lived in an era prior to universal A/C, so her memory of the wind could be saturated by incessant, roaring heat.

Our trips to visit my sister-in-law are always like that. Either bone-chilling, fog-bound, clammy Pismo Beach. Or Casa Grande, Arizona @ 118. Or even Chicago during a freak heat wave -- a third floor apartment with multiple fans in every room trying to trick sleep into coming. So, yeah, without all the modern temperature modifying devices, I can imagine a Didion Santa Ana being vastly different than a Drum Santa Ana.

This is a fascinating thread. I was going to say something about the mistral and tell y'all to resist cutting off your own ears, but never mind.

I particularly liked ex-liberal's describing pre-santana conditions. Dood, the world is a better place with the addition of every highly capable guitarist.

And Disputo's That's nothing. The sky in Chicago *at night* is orange. Ain't it just. We got up at 2:00 Sunday morning to drive out of the city to see the Orionid meteor showers. We had to go all the way to Huntley before we could properly see the stars, but it was totally worth it.

Dissing Didion is such a confession of aesthetic ignorance, it's not even worth addressing.

Anyone who hasn't read Political Fictions, do so, even if you read them in the NYRB when they first came out. They're still on point.

Each to his own, but I'll take the glory of NE seasons over California's non-seasons any day.

Here, here! Although I live in CT, where the rural areas are just as bad as the cities at snow removal. Well, not just as bad. Hartford in a snowstorm is a huge mess, especially for pedestrians.

FWIW: it's a nicely written passage, whether one is emotionally stirred by the Santa Anas or not.

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. Most of the time, we had sea breezes, which nudged the smog up against the mountains. On rare occasions, the wind blew in from the east. Personally, I loved the Santa Ana winds because it cleared smog out of the L.A. basin.

Didion is guilty of taking poetic license. It's just wind, baby. (And Freud replied "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.")

Didion (typically) over-intensifies her description, but she's right about the weirdness of the Santa Ana (or Santana, to natives). I grew up in Pomona, a looong time ago, before A/C, so you spent most of the time outside. It just felt different. You could see forever, and you could pick up random bits of wind-borne conversations from miles away.

Been dying to drag out that old saw about (S) California seasons: Drought, Fire, Earthquake and Riot. Sort of leaves out Mudslide though.

Grew up in LA in the 1950s - Santa Anas were always a bit like what Didion described in her yes exagerrated fashion. The equivalent of the Mistral in the Mediterranean basin - an area that SCal shares a rare climate with.

>I still have vivd childhood memories of the amazing Holl[yw]ood Hills fire of 1961 (we lived about three miles from Griffith Park).

Hey, we must have been near neighbors. I lived on Laurel not far from Horace Mann Elementary in Glendale and my memories of this event were vivid. I was also amazed by the mud slides which followed.

And, no, based on my experience living in Thousand Oaks a year or so later, I don't think Joan D was exaggerating in the least.

MsNThrope et al - I grew up on the S side of the hills. We called 1961 the "Bel Air fire." Is this some sort of cultural divide or were there two separate events?

I could watch it from our front yard - ash fell from the skies one (had to be October) evening. How many hundreds of homes were burned I don't recall but it was bad.

I remember one time when I had *really* bad hay fever during a particularly strong week of santa ana winds. Maybe that's what she means?

Nah.

Southern California folk complaining about the weather, "The winds shows us how close to the edge we are" ...is hilarious. "OH NO, its teh nature!!!1"

Earthquakes ok, but wind?

You just lack passion.

Or I dunno, maybe it's bunk. Do the cats get jumpy?

I don't think I've ever read anything by Didion. Is this typical of her narrative style?
Posted by: Kevin Drum

As a native California, how the hell can you say that? I suggest you read Where I'm From. A great bookend to Chinatown.

The places where most of the people live in California and where most of the nation's vegetables come from are the most unnatural constructs of the "civilized" world. LA is just as nonsensical and wasteful a place as Vegas and Phoenix. None of these cities (throw in San Diego for good measure) should have more than a few hundred thousand people living in them as none has sufficient resources (meaning water, water and water) for the hordes living there today.

I always hated that they turned an otherwise gorgeous day into one of struggle (to get to your car from the office with your hair in one piece). Murder on the sinuses, too...

Santa Anas are ENERGIZING! At least to most of the natives I know! Part of that is the absolute knowledge that your house, town, life could change to a pile of ash in an instant...but, still, Santa Anas are energizing. It's probably an adreniline thing.

It's the same thing as the föhn, chinook, mistral (which is French, not mediterranean), sirocco, ghibli, leveche, etc.

Martin: I knew this event at the time and still recall it as the Bel Air[e?] Fire so I think something other than geography is at work.

You say Manassas and I say Bull Run
Let's call the whole thing off.

“The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance” - Thomas Jefferson

None of these cities (throw in San Diego for good measure) should have more than a few hundred thousand people living in them as none has sufficient resources (meaning water, water and water) for the hordes living there today.
Posted by: JeffII

San Diego's domestic water supply = zero. How insane is that? Disrupt the pipelines and the area couldn't maintain a 100 people.

“The infrastructure of suburbia can be described as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.”
—JH Kunstler

Depends on the extremity, both the extremity of the heat and the extremity that is affected. I've lived here since 1949. Santa Anas vary, as everything does. I remember a number of times when it got over 100 for days and nights at a time. The wind would just suck the moisture out of you. Back before common air conditioning, we spent the evening after the winds died down sitting out on the front lawn in lawn chairs drinking iced tea, and then we slept on the porch.

What I don't remember seeing is any winds this strong for this long.

My wife and son and I spent this morning between 2 and 3 filling our cars with the stuff of our lives. As I drove to work this morning (I'm an official "essential employee"--whoop te do), I could see the flames halfway down the north side of San Miguel Mountain, about 3 miles from my house.

Here in the front range of Colorado, our analogous event is a downslope windstorm, and little variations in where you live can have a dramatic impact on the perceived winds. What can just seem like a bit of a windy day east of down could be a 75 mph howler if you're cozied up right next to the Front Range. I imagine it's the same in LA and San Diego; lots of geographic variability.

Tom

I just think some people aren't particularly sensitive to weather, and some are. There are the people who can smell snow in the air, and the people who think those people must be making things up. Of course, the more time you spend in artificial environments - central heating, ac - the less sensitive to weather variations you will be. Since more and more people are spending more and more of their lives in temperature and humidity controlled environments, fewer and fewer show the sort of sensitivity to weather Didion exhibits. I don't know about Santa Ana winds, but I do know that thunderstorms, snow, fog and other New England weather events hit me much harder than others around me, who think I'm crazy.

Of course, I might actually be crazy...

I lived in So Cal (near Kevin's own Irvine, actually) for 7 years, and I always found the Santa Anas simultaneously irritating and invigorating. Nonetheless, having grown up in the Midwest (and moved back there a year ago), I agree with a previous commenter who said that the verbal excess over the Santa Anas owes more to the boringness of So Cal weather than anything else. After all, this is a place where the TV news declares "StormWatch!" every time a rain system arrives.

Is Didion being overdramatic?!?

Are Santa Anas windy?

Didion is being over-dramatic ... There's a long tradition by those who love hyperbole to make L.A. out as some kind of apocalyptic hell-hole on the edge of the civilized world. In truth, it's a got a lot in common with the rest of the country: just replace hurricanes and tornados with earthquakes and fires. And most of us are as down-to-earth as the Midwesterners I grew up with, except a lot more tolerant.

I like the dry feeling. And with others on this discussion, I suspect that a few days without enough sleep are the real cause of irritability. I don't see any obvious irritability resulting directly from the wind or the dry conditions.

I remember the Bel Air fire. We watched it from a third floor balcony/staircase at Beverly Hills High School.

Somebody should make the pro forma remark that wild fires are a normal part of the southern California landscape. Naturalists think that in prehistoric eras they often burned for weeks at a time. Biologists have found that hillside plants are adapted to wild fire, with root systems that survive the top parts of the plants being burned off. Up in the Sierra Nevadas, you can hear a lecture from the rangers about how the Sequoia trees are also adapted to fire. In fact, new growth occurs after fires more vigorously than at other times.

And most of us are as down-to-earth as the Midwesterners I grew up with, except a lot more tolerant.
Posted by: melissa

Most of them are the Midwesterners you grew up with.

California: The West coast of Iowa. - Joan Didion

Tolerant? Let me guess, you're militant non-smoker?

I just remember being unable to sleep, and you ended up on the streets at two am. Maybe its a different experience for people with air conditioning.

Slightly off point, but here goes:

"reliably long and bitter winters of New England"...

trust me. I've lived in New England all my life, and the winters are getting warmer. Actually, so are the Fall & Summer, but the Winters are getting warmer, most notably the little-discussed yet crucial nighttime maximum temperatures.

I lived in Southern California for 20 years and remember the Santa Anas certainly gave notice when they kicked up, clearing out the smog, whipping up dust and making my skin feel like parchment. I also remember the sound of that wind rising and falling, clattering through palm fronds in front of my place, blowing a few down here and there. Fire was always a concern when they were up, but I never heard of kids freaking and people hiding inside their houses. Ms. Didion may have been trying to convince people back East with thoughts of moving to stay put.

Is it worth mentioning that the name "Santa ana" is a gringo corruption of "Santana" meaning "of Satan"? People apparently thought they felt a bad wind arisin' a long time ago.

Is it worth mentioning that the name "Santa ana" is a gringo corruption of "Santana" meaning "of Satan"? People apparently thought they felt a bad wind arisin' a long time ago.

On a semi-related note, I've always wondered why General Santa Anna of Alamo fame has that extra N in his name. Surely it should have been Santa Ana?

I was born and raised in Pasadena. Whenever the Santa Ana winds would blow across the mountains and down into the L.A. basin, everything would appear and feel rather dry and brittle, as though all the natural world was being relieved of its moisture. Even a glass of water would garner an edge, most probably because one senses the body's need for more hydration during such periods.

The only weather-related effect remotely comparable I've ever experienced was a Chicago-area winter, when painfully cold Arctic blasts from Lake Michigan or the far north would render the air sharp and crystalline, and the landscape stark and fragile.

In both instances, one retains a heightened sense of awareness and an accompanying, often accompanied by an eery exhilaration.

I grew up here and I'm still here writing this from Topanga Canyon where it's been a very stressful 3 days. This is a fascinating thread.

I think Didion nails it. "Here come those Santa Ana winds again..."

It's always been "sneaky freaky" weather.

Scott

You've hit on something pretty important. The climate is changing, however hard we try to deny it.

Here I notice it in Britain in little things like the moths that never go away (it's never cold enough).

It's been wisely argued North Americans don't notice, because the normal variations are so large.

Here in Britain, we had the wettest summer ever recorded (since 1723 when records began). Most people will tell you it was a cold summer.

But it wasn't. Temperatures were above average-- but you can have vehement arguments with people about it, because there were no hot sunny days.

Hey Bob G, I went to Beverly High too, about6 years after you.

The murder rate goes up on days of Santa Ana�s doesn't it? The dryness of your skin and the allergens in the air do drive people to a nervous edge. The place use to be much more open and the rustling of the rock hard branches of the chaparral was audible away from the built up areas. LA has been built over from the days of Phillip Marlowe. People don't try to walk through orange orchards anymore with those hard green leaves falling on them biting their skin amide the horizontal bands of large bits of sand. I think it is not overstated at all. The Santa Ana�s are very dramatic. The Doors with LA woman hit the nail on the head. Looking around to see which way the wind blows with the hills filled with fire. The topless bars with decadence for a diversion and the cops in cars with the LA Confidential style corruption that was always a part of LA. Right on man!

Me thinks I may go out and commit a small murder after I download some porn and scratch my bone dry itching skin.

Just a little side-note that most people I know in LA (not the Valley) don't have AC. You tell yourself you don't need it and, mostly you don't, but when you do and you don't have it, you're pretty damn miserable.

Without ACed house or car, I used to wear a large cotton ice-cube filled scarf around my neck. The Santa Anas would dry that dripping water right up and you'd cool down for a few minutes.

I think she was just using her incredible verbal skills to say that the Santa Anas make us crabby. Which is true.

Via Wikipedia:

'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.'

Don't think it's 'Gringo' corruption of anything.

Steely Dan song: "Babylon Sisters" ".... here come those Santa Ana Winds again."

Santa Ana or Anna is the Spanish form for the mother of Jesus. Lotta stuff around the world named for her.

Including Antonio López de Santa Anna (with 2 n's).

Those of us who live(d) in the beach towns are spoiled. A summer Santa Ana is grim, man! Chandler and Didion sound absolutely spot-on. Of course we rarely venture(d) more than a few miles inland from May to October. I remember riding one out at Venice beach, immersed in water much of the time, most of the night. Kevin must be part of a tougher but nonetheless air-conditioned breed.

Is it worth mentioning that the name "Santa ana" is a gringo corruption of "Santana" meaning "of Satan"?

No, it's not worth mentioning. Your ignorance of basic Spanish is appalling.

You're not from around here, are you?

Is it worth mentioning that the name "Santa ana" is a gringo corruption of "Santana" meaning "of Satan"?

No, it's not worth mentioning. Your ignorance of basic Spanish is appalling. Posted by: Emily

I thought not as well, but my Spanish (or "Mexican" to quote Lee Trevino) is even more appalling.

I always thought the expression or name in Spanish was el diablo.

I lived in San Diego for 2 years, including the big fires of 2003, and I spent a previous October in Anaheim (my first visit to California, and I was in love with the weather). I LOVED THE SANTA ANA WINDS! They were so dry and comfortable, and they always improved my mood a lot. That and June gloom were the closest things to seasons that So. Cal. had. On the other hand, those damn fires made things miserable for at least 6 months. Damn ashes blowing around forever because it never rains, making everything black and dirty, getting in your lungs and doing godknowswhat to your health. I didn't suffer too much from the ashes, but every night for months afterward when I laid down in bed, my heart would start racing for no apparent reason.

Santa Ana or Anna is the Spanish form for the mother of Jesus. Lotta stuff around the world named for her. Including Antonio López de Santa Anna (with 2 n's). Posted by: MsNThrope

Dude, is this some sort of Don Juan peyote trip?

I believe Jesus' mom's (two non-superfluous apostrophes) name in Spanish is Santa Maria (Saint Mary) as her Anglicized name is Mary (also Maria in Italian, as in "Ave Maria," if I'm not mistaken).

I think you're confusing the Virgin with the race track (or was that the sanctified name of anti-gay activist and orange juice spokewoman Anita Bryant?).

Santa Ana or Anna is the Spanish form for the mother of Jesus.

Uh, no. Santa An(n)a is the Spanish name for St. Ann(e/a), the mother of the mother of Jesus.

MsNthrope, yes, I know that a lot of Californians were Midwesterners ... much of downtown Pasadena and downtown Lincoln, Neb., both of which I've called home, look pretty much the same. FYI, I'm as non-militant as you can get (and a non-smoker, but I don't give a crap about that issue as long as people don't smoke by me ... what about you?). And I know that saying some people, and regions, are more tolerant than others makes some people defensive, but that's the way it is.

I always thought the expression or name in Spanish was el diablo.

El Diablo = the Devil. I think: Satanás = Satan. Same guy, ultimately, but, as in English, different names.

"Dissing Didion is such a confession of aesthetic ignorance, it's not even worth addressing."

Anderson:
Thanks for the snark, but I don't recall who elected you the arbiter of aesthetic ignorance. I have read nearly all of Didion. She is compulsively readable, but she prides herself on being what they used to call "neurasthenic" and frankly it's mannered and irritating a lot of the time. Also, the comparison of her to Raymond Chandler is interesting, but I think she's captured more of the fetid air of Jim Thompson.

Haven't read Jim Thompson? What aesthetic ignorance.

Chandler and Didion are novelists, their stories aren't true, and they call upon imagery to paint their canvas. They're not writing op-ed pieces, so don't hold them to that tether. Besides, i'm from SF and i've been in LA when the Santa Anas blow: they give me the creeps too.

Didion (is a) novelists, . . .Posted by: kennie

No. Didion's primarily an essayist. She hasn't written any fiction since the mid-90s. Again, as I suggested to Kevin, read Where I Was From if you're looking for a good indictment of how California came to be what it is today.

i grew up in the west end of the san fernando valley. in the fall of 1971, i was thrown out of bed by the san fernando earthquake. what i remember most about that 6 a.m. wake-up call is waking a few minutes before the shaking stared because the tall eucalyptus trees behind us were bending with the santa ana winds.

so much of southern california is mythological: ms. didion gets it right by describing "earthquake weather".

didion not a novelist? read book of Common Prayer, Play It As It Lays, Run River, Democracy, and The Last Thing He Wanted.

Ummm...

Has anyone here experienced a Santa Ana wind from any position east of Montclair? And you think it's bad in Topanga... You should see it at the mouth of Cajon Pass or out past Whitewater Creek where it gets really bad. And after that, it doesn't return to full strength until it hits the surfline.

Here's an experiment. Next set of winds that doesn't have a major fire to kick your way, head out to Mormon Rocks. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

Sounds like she suffers from the B.J. Myers Manifesto complaint.

Come on Kevin, you never had recess cancelled and had to play Seven Up because of Santa Ana winds?

Never had to bring clothing and blankets for classmates who lost their homes?

Never had a neighbor's roof come loose from the house, spreading pink insulation for blocks?

Never had your way blocked by a crackling power line?

Never felt edgy and uncomfortable because any of these things might happen during these itchy winds, but you never knew what to expect?

California needs a great new writer, the world needs a new kind of music.

I second Off Colfax.
I spent a night (1950"s) at my brother's place at the mouth of El Cajon Pass wondering if the house would fly apart. There were many strong crashing noises outside and the windows/doors were shaking.
Daylight came and I rode my bike around the neighborhood marveling at the blown off roofs and car ports. It was not tornado disaster but for kid from the Bay Area, it was an experience.
My brother's airplane only suffered a fractured spar but on the road to the field there was a Luscomb Sylvair(sp?) rolled up in a tinfoil ball in a tree.

Brian Wilson couldn't surf!? Hmm, that gives me an idea...

Ask someone in Provence about the mistral. Maybe some of the "lore" is just that, but the human experience has room for "lore" doesn't it? Are we so hunkered down in our air conditioned "home offices" that we have lost the magic of being alive?

She so hated to have to drive into downtown L.A. So she garnered Mike into driving her in when they'd have to appear at the Coastal Commission and afterward, she would meet John at the Times and they'd go on their separate way.
Mike would then drive the Corvette back to Broad Beach. John had gotten so worked up over the court case, or rather the neighbor on the beach who had brought cause for it, that one night he went into a rage and slammed his fist through the wall. Joan restrained him with a hammerlock or something like it and told Mike to grab the bottle of pills and force two of them down his throat.
Last winter, Mike clipped the Times article about celebs and their wheels, the one featuring James Dean, Jackson Browne, Dietrich, Ben Affleck and a huge image of Didion lighting up and leaning against the Corvette on her Franklin Avenue driveway. If the flames come over the hill I'll grab it off of the wall and the cat as well
and head down to McClatchey Park.

I'm a native Californian who lived a large section of my youth in near the Santa Ana Canyon (the geographic feature that gives the winds their name). As they might say on Wilshire, I know from wind.

When I read the Didion at in American lit at Canyon HS, I remember thinking she had it exactly right. People do get irritable (including I imagine babies), the light is a different color (bright, but with a strange haze at the same time). I wouldn't know about the maid sulking, but I bet somewhere, sometime a teacher did give up on a 'formal lesson' (Didion's words) and, say, show a film.

And of course, every Cali native knows that the Winds can result in exactly what is happening now.

MsNThorpe quotes Wikipedia on the difference between Santa Ana winds and Santana winds. I love Wikipedia and use it every day. But I am not sure Wikipedia is entirely correct. I believe there is more to the story.

I grew up in L.A. during the 1940s and 1950s. I don't remember hearing Santa Ana winds. It was always Santana winds. After college, in 1966, I returned to L.A. Local TV reporters were using the term Santa Ana. I don't know what happened to cause the change.

Here is one possible explanation by a librarian at the L.A. Public Library. From the Los Angeles Almanac (http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we23.htm): "Another account placed the origin of Santa Ana Winds with an Associated Press correspondent stationed in Santa Ana who mistakenly began using Santa Ana Winds instead of Santana Winds in a 1901 dispatch."

My guess is some person who was a "center of influence" chose to use Santa Ana instead of Santana, and then others followed the lead. Accuracy has nothing to do with it. That seems to happen a lot in L.A.

I agree with Matt Welch. I love reading Joan Didion, but, well, there is that tendency to get swept away on her own prose.

I can't get too bothered with that passage, really, nor do I have the time for a sweeping critique of Joan Didion's collective works.

What I can tell you is that the first time I learned about "earthquake weather," was my first quake --the Whittier Narrows. I ran outside to a neighbors house, only to get caught outside with her when an aftershock hit. We squatted next to a lo