ORLANDO, Fla. – The greater Los Angeles is under siege by catastrophic wildfires that have already consumed many urban and residential areas.
The forecast for Southern California doesn’t look to be doing anyone any favors either, as the Santa Ana winds set up cranks back to near 100%.
So, what are the Santa Ana winds? Is it a wind unique to California? Does it happen elsewhere? Will Florida ever experience a wildfire outbreak because of it? Let’s get into the details.
Santa Ana is a title given to the wind phenomena that occurs in Southern California specifically due to what’s called “cross barrier flow.” Los Angeles, Long Beach and surrounding larger cities are at near sea level, whereas the terrain surrounding this region is much higher up. Why do you think hiking is such a hit near the Hollywood Sign?
When you get the right upper level wind set up, strong jet stream winds come screaming across the mountains in a perpendicular fashion. Say your mountain chain runs north to south. If winds cross these mountains west to east or east to west, this is how you end up experience “downsloping” winds at the surface.
The mountains themselves act like a slide almost and if stability is where it needs to be for the winds to come sinking back down on the other side of your mountains, that’s how the downsloping begins.
Too much stability, and the winds will simply get stuck. Too much instability and rising motions, the winds from above will continue to rise and skyrocket above the ground. When things are in that sweet spot, they come down like when your car hits a speed bump. Up and then back down.
As the wind comes down the backside of your mountain chain, this also causes drying AND warming at the same time. So not only is Southern California being buffeted by strong winds that naturally stoke an already-burning fire, but the warming and drying just adds salt to the open wounds.
By now, you’ve probably put the context clues above together as well! This type of phenomena could never happen in Florida, since we’re so flat. Unless we suddenly sprout a volcano in the middle of the state, or something goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Looking ahead over the next seven days, it looks like California will be back under the prime set up for more Santa Ana impacts. Firefighters will unfortunately not be catching a break and will continue to fight an uphill battle (I promise I’m not being punny).
For us here in Central Florida, things could get very sporty with the weather next week after that same feature in the jet stream pattern plummets into Southern California, rips across the Gulf and heads our way. Details to come before the end of the week.
Be on the look out for our next explainer video from none other than Chief Meteorologist Candace Campos. She’ll be breaking down the Santa Ana even more visually.
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