As a long-time LA resident I’d like to post a dissenting opinion. Sometimes there is a Santa Ana Effect. It’s partly physical. You feel it when you’re outside, a kind of tingly feeling which, I have read, comes from an electrostatic charge in the air created in some way I don’t understand. It’s partly emotional. You walk outside at night. No one else is on the street. The wind hits you in irregular gusts and howls like a sound effects record. Large shop windows whipsaw in and out (once I saw a bookstore window break that way). Signs and lampposts swing and sway while chunks of palm tree roll by like tumbleweeds. The third component of the Santa Ana Effect is habit. You’ve heard the opening to “Red Wind” so many times you when the wind rises you feel like Philip Marlowe and immediately attribute every unusual thing you see to the wind. It’s all very cool. Until the fires start.
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