Fire Storms in the Southland & Santa Ana Winds In LA

Unless someone has lived in the Southland and experienced it ...it is hard to explain what a Santa Ana Wind is or what damage such firestorms can do... or how they work.

LA sits quietly in the basin without the damage often seen in the canyons and the countryside but the wind blows so hot and fast that it shrivels up all the vegetation and the flowers shrivel in a matter of minutes like a fire breathing dragon waltzed down the street breathing hot air onto flowers, hedges, fire frozen in time and singed while the glow of the fires up on the mountains rim adds an orange glow to the horizon and you worry on your friends who live in up in the fiery hills.

Hard to explain all that tropical wind blowing hard yet it's dry and no rain to pelt the landscape, just hot, hot windy, wind... carrying the seeds and embers of fires which hop from one site to another until the whole of the hillside is ablaze, burnt and scorched.

Pictures used are from http://arachnid.pepperdine.edu/grunion/updates/update2007MalibuFire.htm which when the fires go away and you want to learn about the Grunion Runs... go back to it.

It is hard to explain to anyone how Malibu sits like a sliver of land nestled between the hillside and the Great Pacific Ocean and when a fire races down those hills.. it burns right to the end of the shoreline. All that water...sitting there as witness to the power of the flame and the Santa Ana Winds. Then... after the chapparal has burned and the hillside been scorched, comes the winter rains and... the hillsides slide down in torrents of mud unto the Pacific Coast Highway.




LA... Great place, lived there, loved it... every place has it's quirks and its quakes...

No hurricanes in LA... just Fire Storms.

Posting these youtube videos hoping you can see what it really is like to be in the Southland today.
Take care.. be well, my thoughts and prayers go out to anyone who is in the path of such a fire or who has experienced it in the past but keeps the memory alive forever, burned and etched into your mind.


Good video made by Ontario Weather Service (Ontario California)
Hard to watch but listen to the wind, watch the dust in the background, the trees, roof shingles flapping.





Good video that shows how it looks but a bit hard to watch unless you have super high speed:


After math of fires, whether in Malibu or San Diego ..it all looks the same... as if a giant torch was let loose on the landscape and burned everything in it's path for miles. No rhyme, no reason... just the Santa Ana season and the whimsical nature of the fanned flames and flying burning embers.

Fickle Finger of Fire.... and Fire Storms ... a Category One Hurricane is easy compared to what they are going through up in those hills today.. trust me.