Origin of the Name of the Santa Ana Winds

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary calling from San Diego.

Hi, Mary, how you doing?

Good, how are you?

Great, glad to talk to you. What’s on your mind today?

Well, I was wondering about the fact that the winds that were associated with those fires are called Santa Anas.

Mm—

I saw those being reanalyzed somewhere. Somebody said it must have something to do with Satan, right?

I didn’t know what to say. I’ve wondered about it before, but having, you know, like the entire county burning up around you just brought it more to my mind.

Right.

And I didn’t know if it’s a geographic association or if it’s from Spain and something with an area there.

I just have no idea.

-huh.

Well, Mary, talk a little bit about Santa Anas because I have to confess that when I moved here from Kentucky to Southern California, I had never heard of them before, had no idea that they existed.

And they really affect me.

Right.

I had rather a similar experience because I’m from Connecticut, and I found it really hard to understand what anybody was talking about when they talked about Santa Ana.

I’ve lived here about 14 years now, and I now realize when I get up in the morning that there’s a Santa Ana because there either is moisture on the car or there isn’t, and it’s really bright and sunny or it isn’t.

And in San Diego, it’s usually marine cloud layer in the morning.

And sometimes it’s the exact opposite.

And that can be, as I understand it, a Santa Ana.

It means the weather system is coming from the east, from the desert.

Right, right.

And how do they affect you?

Because they just make me weird.

My hair’s better.

Because you’re not as apt to frizz when there’s less moisture.

But then, like, especially it was so dry.

It was so extreme.

At the time of the firestorms, I mean, even before the fire started, I really noticed my skin was dry.

But otherwise, it’s really kind of nice weather.

Yeah, it’s spectacular.

It’s really, really clear, isn’t it?

Really, really dry, really, really clear.

I can hear the freeway that I can’t hear other times of the year.

Yes, that would seem right because the air is just thinner.

Yeah.

Yeah, and Grant mentioned the idea of devils, and I’ve seen people try to associate it with, you know, the vientos de Satan, winds of Satan, or suggesting that it’s somehow from Santana having to do with something satanic.

And certainly it feels that way.

I’ve seen it called devil’s breath or devil’s wind before.

But I think the best guess we have, and it’s only a guess because nobody’s completely sure, that is derived from geography, either the Santa Ana Canyon or the Santa Ana Mountains, because the air tends to go that way.

Right, right, the Santa Ana Mountains in California.

Right, and it’s interesting because those winds affect us so much, and there are all kinds of words for all different kinds of winds.

Did you see the movie Volver by Almodovar?

No.

There’s a, everybody in Spain is going nuts because of this weird east wind there.

Yeah, no, but I’ve heard of the wind in France, which I guess would be really different that they call the Mistral, so just a famous wind that I never really knew what they were talking about there, but I didn’t live in the region that’s affected by it.

Right.

Yeah.

There are a lot of names.

I’m Googling here, and I guess anyone could Google this, but some of these I’ve heard before.

There’s a great list at a site called ggweather.com, ggweather.com slash winds dot html.

I’ll put a link on the website.

Great idea.

But they’ve collected a pretty good list here of this stuff, and it’s really interesting.

There’s almost a personality to some of these winds.

I think of the little faces on the maps of the blowing from the east and the west, and they’re almost human or godlike in the way that some of these winds are named and described.

Well, the whole concept always struck me as very romantic somehow.

I don’t know if I just mean like romance in the usual sense, but poetic, I guess.

Not just because of the way they affect us, but because it almost like changes the world you’re in without traveling anywhere.

And it almost like it portends something important to feel such a change in the climate.

Speaking of portending things, there’s this wonderful quote from Raymond Chandler about Santa Anas.

He says, those hot, dry winds 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.

That’s really nice.

Yes, I think that captures that it is kind of like electricity in the air, although I don’t know that there really is electricity in the air the way there is before a thunderstorm.

There may be because of the wind.

There’s something, yes, and we give names to those winds because they are so powerful.

And so in this case, as far as we know, Mary, I think our best guess is that it has to do with the way the wind comes over the Santa Ana Mountains in Orange County or the Santa Ana Canyon or the river there.

Okay.

Thank you so much for your call, Mary.

All right.

Thank you both.

Take care.

Okay.

Bye-bye.

I think that they have Santa Anas in New York apartments that are heated by radiators because my skin feels like parchment after just a couple months of winter.

This is Santa Granta.

Anyway.

Santa Granta.

Give a couple of windbags a call.

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