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
Adaptation

The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

Homes as a wildfire buffer.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

Keep reading...Show less
Spotlight

How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

Massachusetts and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

  • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
  • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
  • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
  • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
  • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
  • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow