The Wicked Winds of the West

“Mostly clear skies . . . with unseasonably warm daytime conditions. Locally breezy below the passes and canyons.”

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It’s the standing forecast for Santa Ana season--now officially underway in this great basin of ours.

Our prelude to the winter rains, this season of autumn winds can sweep smog from the air and send temperatures soaring . . . and, if you’re living near one of those “passes and canyons,” scatter lawn furniture and send 100-gallon trash cans careening down the street.

Believe me, breezy ain’t the half of it.

It has taken me 10 years of living at the mountains’ edge to stop fearing the Santa Anas’ annual onslaught and consider the howling winds, instead, a paean to the ferocity of nature and our ability to endure it.

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It’s like the rattling of an earthquake when the winds begin buffeting our little tract home. The windows shake, gates clatter and bang, the doors to the attic won’t stay closed.

And it’s worse at night, when the winds pick up and whistle so loudly you can barely hear the wind chimes they’ve set jangling outside or the car alarm bleating in the neighbors’ drive.

When I was married, I used to snuggle under my husband’s arm and shudder with each gust. He’d rouse from sleep to comfort me, and I’d lie awake and curse our move from our old neighborhood--where the Santa Anas were pleasantly warm, at worst chapping our lips and hiking our water bill--to this foothill home in the middle of a wind tunnel.

Now my children huddle with me on windy nights, waking time and again with a start when a strong gust makes the dog start barking or rattles the windows in my room.

It strikes me, as I reassure them, that now I am expected to be unafraid, to tell them: “Don’t worry. It’s just the wind,” even though my heart is racing.

I’ve got more reason to fear than most; I’ve felt the wind’s power. On a college campus in Cleveland 20 years ago, I was caught in a ferocious gale that lifted me off my feet and slammed me into a tree, knocking me unconscious. Two ugly scars, on my chin and knee, bear testimony to the encounter.

Still, it doesn’t take being airborne to make you fear the wind’s raw power and primitive force. It’s the fiercest weather--if you don’t count earthquakes, brush fires and floods--that Southern California has to offer.

When last autumn’s winds roared through, they wreaked havoc not seen here since the Northridge quake.

Big rigs were toppled, trees uprooted, trash cans and street signs hurled about like missiles.

There’s a scientific explanation. Something about a high pressure zone over the Rockies and a low pressure zone off the Pacific Coast that combine to create drying winds that gather speed as they move through the mountains that ring the Southland.

Forced through narrow passes, the winds are compressed, which gives them more force. Foothill dwellers like me bear the brunt of that maniacal force, as winds roar out of the canyons and break free.

The winds’ toll on the body is easy to spot--the itchy eyes, scratchy throats and raw skin are trademarks of the season.

The impact on the psyche is more subtle but no less profound. Sleepless nights give way to jangled nerves, and the constant battle to hold on to your purse, your newspaper, your child, in the face of harsh, relentless winds, is enough to put anybody on edge.

It’s the time of year when therapists brace for an upsurge in calls, “the season,” author Joan Didion once said, “of suicide and divorce and prickly dread.”

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It was like living in a parallel universe this week, as I sat at the kitchen table each morning before sunup, reading the newspaper weather report. “Record-breaking highs, scorching sun, clear blue skies. . . .”

Outside, it was dark and cold, and I could hear tree branches scraping against the wall and see piles of dead leaves swirling on the patio.

I knew that in parts of the city children were dressing for school in shorts and tank tops, and runners were hitting the beaches to avoid the coming midday heat. But my children pulled on their jackets and jeans, and wondered whether--again--it would be too windy at school to play handball at recess or to eat lunch outside.

At the worst, they know, these winds can constrict their world like the paralyzing snowstorms I remember as a child, confining us to the house for days on end.

But then maybe that’s what we need sometimes, here where we stand so close to nature’s glory in the mountains above us. It’s easy to forget how precious it is.

After all, life is not just a series of calm, clear blue-sky days. There are winds so fierce they can knock us down. But when we get back up, what beauty awaits us.

* Sandy Banks’ column is published Mondays and Fridays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.