TalkLeft has a great excerpt from Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem on the Santa Ana winds, those east-to-west hot winds that blow in southern California and fan the fires.
Just an excerpt of the excerpt:
The Santa Ana, which is named for one of the canyons it rushes through, is foehn wind, like the foehn of Austria and Switzerland and the hamsin of Israel. There are a number of persistent malevolent winds, perhaps the best know of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco, but a foehn wind has distinct characteristics: it occurs on the leeward slope of a mountain range and, although the air begins as a cold mass, it is warmed as it comes down the mountain and appears finally as a hot dry wind. Whenever and wherever foehn blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about “nervousness,” about “depression.”
In Los Angeles some teachers do not attempt to conduct formal classes during a Santa Ana, because the children become unmanageable. In Switzerland the suicide rate goes up during the foehn, and in the courts of some Swiss cantons the wind is considered a mitigating circumstance for crime. Surgeons are said to watch the wind, because blood does not clot normally during a foehn.
Wow. I clicked the link and read the entire excerpt… makes me want to read the book. It is beautifully written and definitely conjurs the images we are currently seeing on CNN. I can’t image what will happen if we were to have have 14 days of Santa Ana winds…
I always thought California might actually some day fall into the ocean due to earthquakes. (I know that’s not a technical term, more of an urban legend kind of deal, but it’s so visual that I will use it here.) It seems the path for future landslides is being burned to the sea.
The air must be awful.
Holy cow!