Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Guides

Does Climate Change Make the Santa Ana Winds Worse?

The legendary winter gusts have long freaked out Angelenos.

The Santa Ana winds.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, NASA Earth Observatory

“It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows,” the great Los Angeles chronicler Joan Didion once wrote of the Santa Ana winds. It also happens to be the season of wildfires. The winds “bedeviled” efforts to fight the deadly Woolsey fire in 2018 and created “dangerous conditions” when they whipped the nearly 20,000-acre Mountain fire in Ventura County this past fall. And they were blowing, too, when a spark of unknown origin ignited the now 23,000 acres of wildfire burning through the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Though steeped in mystery and superstition (writers call them the “devil winds”), the Santa Ana winds are common in Los Angeles during this time of year. (Scientists call them simply “offshore winds.”) The phenomenon is caused by winter’s cold, dry air becoming lodged in the bowl of the Great Basin, where it forms a high-pressure area. That clockwise-moving air wants to escape, and it does so by rushing down and south through the mountain passes to the low-pressure area on the coast: Los Angeles.

The wind can pick up a lot of speed — on Wednesday morning, gusts topped 100 miles per hour in the San Gabriel Mountains. It can also become drier and warmer — by as much as 50 degrees Fahrenheit — as it rushes through the passes toward the coast, which is what gives the Santa Anas their signature warmth, which so many find disquieting.

What makes the Santa Ana winds happening now unique?

For one thing, the current Santa Anas are on the upper end of the spectrum for velocity, which is part of why they have such a significant impact — and cause firefighters so much trouble. For another, there is a “rare placement of upper-level jet stream winds” giving the system a more northerly flow as opposed to the usual north-easterly orientation, Scott Capps, an atmospheric scientist and the head of Atmospheric Data Solutions, a forecasting firm, told me in an email. As a result, “many areas that are typically not impacted by Santa Ana winds were impacted.”

Does climate change affect the Santa Anas?

“Logically, it makes sense that climate change will impact the frequency and characteristics of [the Santa Anas],” Capps told me. However, “due to the complexity of the environment, we cannot blame one single factor for any extreme weather event.” The more obvious connection between the L.A. fires and climate change is the lack of precipitation during what is supposed to be the region’s wet season; some parts of southern California have received just 10% of their normal rainfall since October, making the area ripe for a fire.

Scientists used to think that inland warming would reduce the cold weather-related high pressure in the Great Basin and weaken the Santa Anas. While it does appear that so-called “cold” Santa Anas — caused by air in the Great Basin that is so cold initially that it’s still chilly when it reaches L.A., and which account for about a third of all Santa Anas — are becoming less frequent, the more traditional “warm” winds that are associated with wildfires don’t actually seem to bear out this hypothesis. Instead, they “are spread uniformly over the seven decades of record,” the authors of a 2021 study wrote.

If climate change is doing anything to warm or accelerate Santa Anas, the data would appear to suggest“an increasing potential of warmer and drier [Santa Ana winds] to dry out coastal vegetation and, particularly in anomalously dry winters, enhance the coastal wildfire season even into spring,” the authors went on.

While it’s far too soon to link the California disaster to climate change, the study’s authors now seem prescient: dry vegetation and an unusually dry winter both go far in explaining why this week’s fires are so destructive.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Hotspots

Renewables at War in the Worcesters

And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Worcester County, Massachusetts – The town of Oakham is piping mad about battery energy storage.

  • A Rhynland Energy BESS facility filed a request with Massachusetts regulators in April to override longstanding local reservations against battery storage, dating back to a previous project fight from 2022. Local conservative organizations have been amplifying opposition to the project.
  • Rhyland may be able to sidestep Oakham’s opposition thanks to a new permitting law providing for exemptions from local restrictions, a la Michigan and other “primacy” states.

2. Worcester County, Maryland – A different drama is going down in a different Worcester County on Maryland’s eastern shore, where fishing communities are rejecting financial compensation from U.S. Wind tied to MarWin, its offshore project.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

The Most Pressing Question for Energy Developers After the House’s IRA Cuts

A conversation with Heather Cooper, a tax attorney at McDermitt Will & Emery, about the construction rules in the tax bill.

The Q & A subject photo.
Heatmap Illustration

This week I had the privilege of speaking with Heather Cooper, a tax attorney at McDermitt Will & Emery who is consulting with renewables developers on how to handle the likelihood of an Inflation Reduction Act repeal in Congress. As you are probably well aware, the legislation that passed the House earlier this week would all but demolish the IRA’s electricity investment and production tax credits that have supercharged solar and wind development in the U.S., including a sharp cut-off for qualifying that requires beginning construction by a date shortly after the bill’s enactment.

I wanted to talk to Heather about whether there was any way for developers to creatively move forward and qualify for the construction aspect of the credits’ design. Here’s an abridged version of our conversation, which happened shortly after the legislation passed the House Thursday morning.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Spotlight

Virginia Counties Clamp Down on Solar Projects

How well-organized opposition is killing renewable energy in a state that’s desperate for power

Virginia and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Commonwealth of Virginia is clamping down on solar farms.

At least 39 counties in Virginia – 41% of all the state’s counties – now have some form of restriction on solar development, according to a new analysis of Heatmap Pro data. Many of these counties adopted ordinances significantly reducing how much land can be used and capping the total acreage of land allowed for solar projects. Some have gone further by banning new solar facilities altogether.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow