An Early Foehn

Posted on January 21, 2004 in Global Warming Weather

The wind howls and the trees shake their fists at it while it passes.

The Santanas (or Santa Anas for those who prefer to christianize them) usually come in late October and March. They are several weeks early this year. Two weeks ago, hummingbirds showed up at our feeders. Grass started to sprout in December after early winter storms.

This unsteadiness of the season scrapes and abrades the loose certainty of winters past, when I could count on rain in January and wind in March. Don’t tell me that world weather isn’t changing.

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It’s hard for people to believe that their choices and actions affect the climate so significantly. They see only themselves is the problem. The best analogy that I can think of the route where they put their feet. If you cross a meadow once, you leave a path that might be concealed by the next wind. If thousands follow you, that trail becomes a scar on the earth.

There are wagon ruts across the Great Plains and the Southwest still uncovered after more than a century. Indian trails from before the Conquest can still be seen in many places.

That is how great our power to efface the planet is.

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Addendum: I went down the hill to run my weekly Wednesday workshop at Barnes and Noble. The wind seemed to be blowing from all sides here on the hill, though mostly from the northwest. My eyes felt like half dried mudholes. When I got down to the flats that stretch from Portola Parkway to Laguna Woods, I looked at the treetops. Not a leaf moved. Motion resumed when I arrived in the Laguna Hills, but more slightly than what blasted me from all sides at home. When I came home, the wind flipped my hair over so that the part was on the opposite side. Dogs bemoaned all the dust, the pollen, the dirt specks, and the positive ions in the air. Their dirges rolled between the condominiums and joined the vocalise of the storm.