Bring on the moodiness, i mean the Santa Ana.

Well, it’s that time of year again. Time for the Santa Ana’s to blow. Pretty soon, you will hear about the Santa Ana almost every other week in the weather report. Just last week, on the first day of autumn, the Santa Ana Winds were back. As a native to Southern California, these winds are pretty much the norm. As soon as fall comes, so do the winds. You can try to describe the Santa Ana to someone who hasn’t experienced it, but it is so hard. It is such a different feeling than other winds.

The Santa Ana Winds are a downward sloping wind. Down Slope Winds are given a name wherever they occur in a region, and the Santa Ana winds occur in Southern California,

To the east of Los Angeles are the Santa Ana Mountains and the Santa Ana canyon, which the Santa Ana winds are named for. When a wind blows from the east towards the ocean, they are down slope winds coming off of the Santa Ana Mountains. These winds are hot and dry as they move downward towards the ocean.

This same article talks a little bit about how these winds are formed, and why they are so dry. I personally hate the winds because it is so hard to get around in them. It is very scary to drive in winds with gusts reaching 100mph sometimes. Now that is a very extreme case of the winds, but I know that they do get that fast. Usually the winds blow around 40mph and have to be at least 29mph to even be labeled as a Santa Ana.

If you drive up I- 15 right before the Cajon Pass near Foothill, while the Santa Ana is blowing, I guarantee you will see a truck or two overturned by the wind. I have seen it myself more times than I can count, and I rarely drive that way. There are often times trees uprooted by the wind and power lines blown over. That’s the scary thing about the Santa Ana, it is a wind that can destroy things so deeply rooted in the ground. With power lines being blown over, no wonder there are so many wildfires in Southern California at the end of the summer, early fall when the Santa Ana’s are blowing strong.

overturned truck

uprooted tree

Typically, the Southern California Wildfire season and the Santa Ana are synonymous. The two go hand in hand. The dry hot conditions of the atmosphere during these winds can cause a small wildfire to quickly spread.

fire during the wind

I do also want to mention a little bit about how the wind can affect your mood. These downward sloping winds produce a large amount of positive ions in the air, which can cause your nerves to be on end. Many have come to refer to these winds are “ill winds.”

You might be thinking these are just winds like any other wind. Not true, something different happens with a Santa Ana wind. Something happens to the air and atmosphere in a down sloping wind.

In her essay, “The Santa Ana”, Joan Didion talks about how the wind causes strange behaviors in people. She talks about how the positive ions in the air cause people to have bad moods, and other weird behaviors. I never really believed it until I did more research on the subject and found that it was true.

In a 1974 study conducted by the Swiss Meteorological Institute have shown that these ill winds cause physical problems such as headaches, dizziness, eye twitching, nausea, fatigue, saline disorders, water retention, respiratory problems, asthma, slower reaction time and host of other even more serious problems. Mental disorders caused by the increase in positive ions are nervousness, emotional unbalance, easily irritated, apathy, listlessness, insecurity, anxious and depression.

Well, what does this mean for students? If the Santa Ana is blowing strong outside, the last thing you are going to want to do it sit in a classroom. You are already going to be having problems with your allergies because of all the dust in the air. Then the positive ions are going to cause you to feel tired and irritable. The last thing you are going to want to do is sit in class and listen to lectures all day on things you couldn’t care less about. This is bad for students in southern California because the winds blow so often in the fall. We are pretty much used to it by now, and it is nice to finally be able to explain the moodiness that comes with the wind. I wish that when I was in high school I could have blamed some of my poor test scores on the wind. I feel like if more people knew that there was a scientific explanation for the lousy way they feel during the wind, people would blame the wind for a lot more things. It is science after all.



Note: Just as I was getting ready to post this, the weather report came on, and we can expect the Santa Ana will be blowing by Thursday. It is not going to last for too long, but it is going to be somewhat strong.