An Ill Wind Blows in O.C.

The Santa Ana winds made a season debut Monday by pulling steering wheels out of hands, stealing road signs, snapping trees and power lines and leaving at least 56,000 Orange County homes and businesses without electricity.

The show won’t go on much longer, though. Winds are expected to calm down this morning, leaving little more than a breeze behind by nightfall and occasional gusts of up to 30 mph, meteorologists said. High temperatures will remain in the upper 70s to low 80s.

“The worst is over,” said Bill Hoffer, a spokesman for the National Weather Service. “It may pick up again in some of the canyons and passes, but it won’t last.”

At least half of the 30 minor accidents reported to the California Highway Patrol in Orange County on Monday were wind-related. Many occurred at intersections where traffic signals were out, but others were caused by people “trying to out-race Mother Nature,” said Officer Jay Jones, who investigated one on the Santa Ana Freeway near Tustin.

“We’ve got 80-mph gusts going on out here, and people are still flooring it,” Jones said. “Cars are bouncing around all over and it’s real easy to lose control at those speeds.”

Meredith Fisher, 22, of Aliso Viejo said her Nissan Sentra felt “like it was going to take off into the sky” when the wind grabbed it on the Santa Ana Freeway near Irvine Spectrum and tossed her into the next lane. She bumped a car driven by Dan Scheiber, 31, but both were unhurt.

“It was like it picked me right up,” Fisher said. “I thought my wheels were in mid-air.”

Scheiber, who said he has been wanting a new car anyway, examined the dent in the side of his Pontiac Fiero and shrugged.

“Everybody’s fine,” the Garden Grove salesman said. “It was sort of like we just played bumper cars for a second.”

CHP spokeswoman Angel Johnson said officers spent much of the day dragging downed trees off roadways, picking up debris from pickup trucks and hunting for blown-away freeway signs. And on one freeway, the wind lifted a ladder from a truck bed and tossed it into another lane, she said.

“There’s been lots of road hazards,” Johnson said. “It’s amazing we haven’t had more accidents.”

The wind knocked out power to 56,000 Orange County customers of Southern California Edison Co., spokesman Kevin Kelley said. By 10:45 p.m. Monday, crews had restored power to all but about 1,500. They were expected to have power by this morning.

Tustin, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Garden Grove were the hardest hit, with dozens of downed lines in each city, Kelley said. Fullerton, Orange, Placentia, Yorba Linda and Santa Ana had isolated outages.

“If the winds cooperate with us, we’ll have everybody up tonight [Monday],” Kelley said.

In Tustin Ranch, where gusts reached 79 mph, hundreds of young, skinny trees along medians and in new developments were uprooted. Landscapers surveyed the damage Monday and said they would wait until the winds slowed before trying to replant.

“They’re falling over all around,” said Miguel Ramos, who originally staked many of the new trees along Tustin Ranch Road. “It’s so sad.”

Sandi McIntyre, 44, said a blast of wind “at least 60 mph” yanked a branch off a pine near her Anaheim home and dumped it on her parked Taurus, slightly buckling the roof and hood.

“It could’ve been like 80 [mph],” she said. “Whatever it was, it had good aim.”

At John Wayne Airport, pilots rerouted takeoffs and landings to navigate 40-mph winds, said spokeswoman Kathleen Chambers. No flights were canceled and there were few weather-related delays, she said.

“We’ve made it through fine so far,” Chambers said.

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Meteorologists predict the windstorm will begin to weaken today, as the mammoth high-pressure system responsible for it moves away.

Officials at WeatherData, a Kansas-based weather service that provides forecasts to The Times, said the high-pressure system covering 11 Western states was “a green light” for the season’s first Santa Ana winds.

“The conditions were lining themselves up for [a windstorm] and that pressure system was the final ingredient,” said meteorologist Mark Muholland. “You already had all of the right stuff.”

Muholland said the Santa Anas usually kick up when four elements are present in the atmosphere: A high-pressure system, cooler air, no fog and a strong jet stream. Recent temperatures in the 60s and a clearer-than-usual coastline laid the foundation for Monday’s winds, Muholland said.

Also contributing to the storm is a jet stream hovering 15,000 to 20,000 miles above Southern California with 120-mph winds.

The outcome of today’s conditions depends at least partly on temperamental weather patterns on the East Coast, which has been socked with rain and snow beneath a low-pressure system, Muholland said.

If that system had moved farther east as expected, the pressure-system fueling the Santa Anas would also have moved away sooner.

“The winds definitely wouldn’t have been as bad for [Orange County] then,” Muholland said. “So in that case, blame it on those East Coasters.”

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Return of the Santa Anas

Santa Ana winds, like those experienced on Monday, occur at all times of the year, but they are most frequent in the fall. They are generally warm winds from the desert.

1. High Pressure Area: Air moving in a clockwise motion over Idaho/ Utah is drawn toward a low pressure area off the Southern California coast.

2. Dry Desert Air: Moisture is removed as the air flows into the low pressure area.

3. Mountain Compression: The air is compressed as it moves down through the mountains surrounding the Los Angeles Basin toward sea level. As the density of the air increases, its temperature goes up and its humidity goes down. This helps create the hot dry conditions of the Santa Anas.

4. Canyons and Passes: Terrain surrounding the Los Angeles basin is well suited for increasing the speed of the Santa Ana winds. The winds tend to be from the north-northeast. As the air enters the canyons, it is squeezed much as a stream whose banks have narrowed. The funneling causes acceleration and 2 to 3 times the wind speed in the canyon than in the basin.