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Current Events » in reply to This is Santa Ana season

That would be "Santana winds"

That Wikipedia article's a fine example of why you have to take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. The "Etymology" section is amusingly adamant that it's "Santa Ana" and that "Santana" derives from a mistake made by some newscaster in the 1970s/80s...which is adamantly exactly backward.

I was taught the term "Santana winds" in elementary school in SoCal in the 60s and that it's "Santa Ana" that's the corruption of the correct term. The mechanism is pretty obvious: "Santa Ana" is a common place name in the LA basin (a town and a river and a mountain range), and so people would tend to hear "Santa Ana" when "Santana" was meant. Given that nobody bothers to correct newscasters and weather forecasters any more, I expect "Santana" to be forgotten shortly and "Santa Ana" to take its place, and only a few old farts like me will remember the correct term.

Other than quibbling about the terminology, the wind, "Santa Ana" or otherwise, is the correct answer. Nick chided us for debating politics while California burned, but speaking as a Californian, my mea culpa is that those fires have become pretty routine. This summer Northern California burnt to a crisp, and a couple of those fires were personally connected to me--one a place where I used to live, the other surrounding the home of a friend. I guess the local fires loom larger in my mind than those 300 miles to the south. California's a big place.

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