How California’s ‘Demonized’ Winds Shape Wildfire Season

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/us/santa-ana-winds-diablo-saddleridge-fire-blackouts.html

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By Jill Cowan

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Among meteorological phenomena, California’s autumn winds have distinctly bad reputations.

The past couple of weeks haven’t done much to dispel them.

In Northern California, fierce Diablo winds helped create the dangerous conditions that prompted Pacific Gas & Electric to shut off power to hundreds of thousands of customers for days.

[Inside PG&E’s blackout control room: “This Did Not Go Well.”]

Then there are the Santa Ana winds, which helped whip up the deadly fires that tore across the Southland over the weekend.

The Santa Anas hold a particular place in Los Angeles lore, not only as fire propellants and harbingers of allergy flare-ups, but also as a kind of malevolent psychic force, a regional Mercury in retrograde.

That last part rankles Janin Guzman Morales a bit, though.

“The winds have been here since way before we were,” she told me on Sunday. “The narrative of them being demonized as aspects of nature — I don’t think that’s a fair approach.”

[Read more about how the blackouts hit the poor much harder than the wealthy.]

What Ms. Guzman Morales, a scientist at U.C. San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography who has researched Santa Ana winds, hopes to encourage instead is perhaps less mysterious: thoughtful evaluation of the way we interact with weather in a changing climate.

She said that the Saddleridge and the Sandalwood fires, which have destroyed homes and have been blamed for three deaths, were fueled by typical Santa Ana winds.

“This is mid-October, so this is pretty much the standard, classic wildfire season in Southern California,” she said.

The winds, she said, usually last for a couple of days before they subside, which gives firefighters a chance to control blazes. On average, she said, there are three Santa Ana wind events this month each year.

But the damage that such fires cause is increasing, as scientists have warned, because more people are moving into homes built near where cities end and wildlands begin. Weather is becoming more extreme in general, so this year’s rainy winter has made for lots of material to burn.

[Read about why more people are living in the wildland-urban interface — and why they’re at risk.]

Ms. Guzman Morales said her research has shown that climate change could make Santa Ana wind events less frequent in fall and spring, and when coupled with projected decreases in fall precipitation, would push Southern California’s wildfire season deeper into winter.

She said it’s tough to predict whether that could contribute to more severe blazes, although her report suggested that back-to-back Santa Ana wind events in December could result in longer burning and bigger wildfires.

While they arrive and move separately, Northern California’s Diablo winds behave similarly to Santa Ana winds, Ms. Guzman Morales said, but have been less studied.

“We want to look at the coordination between those two wind regimes,” she said, “and whether there’s a common larger scale reason.”

Here’s what else you need to get caught up:

As of Sunday afternoon, the Saddleridge Fire was 41 percent contained, according to CalFire. All evacuation orders had been lifted and schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were set to run on normal schedules today, with some outdoor activities limited.

Officials have not determined the fire’s cause, but they said they’re investigating an electrical tower as the possible ignition point — just as energy companies tried to take precautions by shutting off power to customers around the state. [The Los Angeles Times]

The Sandalwood Fire in Riverside County was 86 percent contained, CalFire said as of Sunday evening. Residents of the Villa Calimesa Mobile Home Park were still under evacuation orders. Officials said they hoped to have the fire fully contained today. [The Press-Enterprise]

Also: The authorities said a garbage truck driver dumped a burning load of trash by the side of the road, sparking the Sandalwood Fire. [The New York Times]

And here’s how Smokey Bear’s legacy gets at questions about individual responsibility versus collective action in preventing fires. [The New York Times]

Forecasts bode well for getting both major blazes under control. [Los Angeles Daily News]

Power was restored to all PG&E customers affected by the blackouts. And cooler temperatures are expected to be on the way to the Bay Area, reducing the fire risk. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

The planned outages, experts said, were a low-tech solution to a problem afflicting a high-tech state. They said microgrids could be a potential way forward. [The New York Times]

And, if you missed it, solar energy proponents have said a virtual solar power plant could achieve similar effects in Los Angeles. Here’s how that could work. [The New York Times]

We often link to sites that limit access for nonsubscribers. We appreciate your reading Times coverage, but we also encourage you to support local news if you can.

Berkeley had its first Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day in 1992. It’s now one of more than 100 localities that have made the switch — and more are shifting over. [The New York Times]

Southern California cannabis businesses are trying to be more green — as in using solar energy and figuring out how to be more efficient. [The Desert Sun]

California officially became the first state in the country to forbid middle schools from starting before 8 a.m. and high schools from starting before 8:30 a.m. [The Sacramento Bee]

Here’s more context about the many bills Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed and ones he’s vetoed. [CalMatters]

In addition to literature, the Santa Ana winds have been immortalized, naturally, in song.

So we’ve added three, all named “Santa Ana Winds,” to our California playlist.

The first is a kind of Frankie Valli parody from the second season of the CW show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Like the rest of the show, the song is a little hard to explain out of context, but it’s really darkly funny.

The second is from the Long Beach band Cold War Kids. “Making headlines again,” the song says of the winds.

And the third “Santa Ana Winds” comes from the Charlottesville, Va., band Sons of Bill.

Mariel Doerfel, who lives in Los Angeles, wrote that for her, the song “captures the claustrophobia and irritability famously associated with the Santa Ana winds, and evokes the lonesome ennui of life in a region obsessed with appearances.”

Click here to listen to the California Soundtrack on Spotify.

California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here.

Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, went to school at U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter, @jillcowan.

California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley.