Santa Ana Winds

I'm sitting in the patio shirtless and barefoot. I'm drinking a glass of some excellent merlot from Trader Joe's (how do they manage to sell such good wine so cheaply?!). It's dusk and it's probably 85-90 degrees and dry where I'm sitting. And it is absolutely delicious, like soaking in a warm bath. I love this weather passionately. And it's all due to a phenomenon known as the Santa Ana Winds.

The typical weather pattern in southern California is an offshore flow in the afternoon as the inland air warms and rises toward the end of the day. This pulls in moist ocean air that flows over the coastal mountains (about 30 miles inland). The air is cooled as it rises over the mountain and the moisture drops out as precipitation leaving dry, cloudless skies to the east, hence the Mojave desert in southeastern California.

Today, however, the flow reversed. A cold air mass settled between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas and exerted enough pressure to overcome the usual offshore flow. The so-called Santa Ana winds came gushing in through the mountain passes bringing that delicious dry hot desert air to the coastal plane. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to sit on the porch with your favorite adult beverage (we're all adults here, aren't we?). It's the sort of weather that makes you want to go out to your favorite taco stand with your best friend (it is Southern California, after all!) and that's exactly what I'm going to do....