The Santa Ana winds are blowing again, and Southern California is on fire again. This time, some of the fires are in northeastern Orange County. That’s far enough from here that we don’t have to worry — other years, they have come as close as lower Newport Beach. But the autumn winds and the fires always make for some spooky shit. I don’t even live in the canyons (which burn often, and are frequently said to be haunted); but the entire place seems haunted.

Last night, the winds stayed calm where I live until around 7 p.m., whereupon they commenced to blow with the fury of a demon. The sound is different to the snowy whistle of blizzard winds or the rainy howl of hurricane or thunderstorm winds. This wind has an empty rattle like evil snakes or dry bones. It’s as though you can hear how parched the leaves are, the moisture leached out of everything. It’s a lifeless sound, a dead feeling, and it’s not good. It’s like listening to the winds of Hell.

Then, around 10:30 p.m., the wind stopped. It slammed shut like the lid of a coffin, and suddenly everything was deadly silent again. That spooked me even more than the wind had done. And then I heard a dry rustling, a creaking of the wooden fence out back which has been dried and bleached by twenty autumns just like this one. It wasn’t a rustling of the wind, it was the dry crackle of something moving. I finally determined, through my bedroom window and the illumination of our backyard spotlight, that it was only a youngish and uncommonly clumsy possum, stumbling across the top of the fence, trying to navigate the ivy. But knowing that didn’t take the chill from my spine.

That was before the fires started. Today, our family ventured out to do our Saturday errands during the late morning: the usual Target, supermarket, one-of-the-kids-needs-new-pants shuffle. At some point I came outside and thought Shit, it’s going to rain. But then I realized it wasn’t rain clouds I saw; these clouds were unmistakably brown and boiling. I blinked in disbelief for a bit, thinking of the Catholic-school images of the Apocalypse from my childhood religion text. You would have sworn Jesus was going to march out from behind those boiling clouds, that strangely orange sun. And the clouds gradually expanded and covered the sky, even though it was a warm and sunny day.

But it wasn’t the end of the world. It was only another autumn day in Southern California during fire season.

I used to think of the smell of autumn as leaves crunching underfoot, moist earth, the occasional bonfire as neighbors burned the leaves they had raked. In So Cal, autumn also smells like wood smoke, but it looks and feels like the end of the world. Tomorrow the ashes will fall like snow flurries and cover the cars and sidewalks. The National Weather Service forecast for my area predicts Hot and hazy, with smoke. Doesn’t that sound a bit like Hell to you?

* * *

Okay. Enough of that shit. My family regularly watches a situation comedy on Nickelodeon called Drake & Josh, which in a nutshell is the story of two stepbrothers and their bratty little sister. As a rerun of the show started last night, our family had this conversation:

Sam: It’s another Drake & Josh.

Me [consulting digital cable guide]: Oh yeah, I know this one. It’s the one where they have the sheep.

Sam: Yeah. And the sheep gets pregnant!

[beat]

Ben [aside, to me]: Well, was it Drake or Josh?

In Southern California, generally the hottest part of the year begins around Labor Day. June and July tend to be fairly temperate, especially June, when most mornings are cloudy and foggy, giving way to sun only in the afternoon. In particular, Labor Day weekend tends to be brutally hot. Most of my California Labor Day memories involve sitting in the swimming pool half the day eating chilled fruit, or sitting in my underwear in front of a box fan.

But here is what Orange County Register science blogger Gary Robbins says about Labor Day weekend 2008:

Labor Day will be 10 degrees cooler than normal — especially at the coast — due to a large low pressure system that’s building over Nevada, says the National Weather Service. Temperatures aren’t expected to rise above the upper 60s or low 70s at the beach, and they’ll only reach the low 80s across much of inland Orange County.

“There’s going to be an onshore flow starting sometime Sunday and lasting into Monday,” says Stan Wasowski, a weather service forecaster. “It’ll send cool, moisture air ashore. It’ll be like one big air conditioner. And the marine layer will be thicker than usual.

“It’ll be quite a change from Labor Day last year, when we had a heat wave. The temperature in Fullerton got up to 108, and it hit 99 at John Wayne Airport.”

We had big heat waves in April this year. Perhaps we’re to be spared this fall? Generally the hot dry weather lasts into October when the fires start and it doesn’t cool off until Halloween. I can’t hope for football weather, but I’m definitely up for a Labor Day that doesn’t swelter everyone’s ass off.

Another unseasonable So Cal heat wave, and let me tell you it is hot. Stupidly hot. Too hot to go to school. Not too hot to work, because there is air conditioning here, but the coffee sucks and there is nothing good to eat.

Too hot to be at home, because we only have air conditioning in the master bedroom and I am too fucking cheap to run the thing. The sea breeze doesn’t come up till after 7 p.m., and all afternoon the black roofing tiles bake in the heat and radiate up into our upstairs windows.

The dogs lie in the dusty bits of the garden to keep cool. The kids run around in their underwear. When I get home, I can’t get my bra off fast enough. It’s too hot to run the stove or the oven, and definitely too hot to fold clothes warm from the dryer. My kids are wrinkled, but I’m too hot to care.

Is this global warming? June in So Cal tends to be overcast and a bit chilly. If I’m counting correctly, this is our fourth heat wave since April. But I’m too hot to keep track. And dreading September and October, when the real heat sets in.

As seen in my weather blog (as if anyone read my weather blog; shit, I don’t), there has been turbulent weather in Southern California for the past couple of days due to a pair of low-pressure systems moving through in an odd manner, south to north. The combination of warm and cold air is a perfect recipe for tornadoes.

So yesterday there was a tornado in Moreno Valley, near Riverside, east of here. It apparently derailed a train and caused all sorts of mayhem. Did I see it? I did not, apart from YouTube and local news outlets.

I’ve had a love-hate relationship with tornadoes since I was a small kid, probably due in large part to The Wizard of Oz. Twister is one of my all-time favorite movies. I wanted to be a meteorologist since I was six or so. I’m terrified of tornadoes, yet I have a strong attraction to them. But I have I ever beheld a funnel cloud in person? No, I have not. Despite that my family lived for a while in northern Ohio. Despite the frequent waterspouts off the Southern California coast in the rainy season. Despite, dammit, the twin tornadoes in Riverside yesterday.

The weather looks to probably settle down over the next couple of days. I suppose I’m relieved I haven’t seen any funnel clouds; I might completely panic if I did. But can’t I see just one? Just to find out, you know.

Going Like Sixty introduced me to Blog365, a network of daily bloggers. I never thought I could ever maintain blogging daily, at least not that anyone would read. My rants and ramblings come in bursts and waves, and while I could certainly post something every day, it wouldn’t be anything people would want to read.

But I’ve recently read a couple of biographies of 18th century figures ranging from an obscure New England midwife to Thomas Jefferson, and have been charmed by their daily habit of recording local weather conditions. Now there is something I observe and think about every single day. Despite my frequent rants about the monotony of So Cal weather, the reality is that there are indeed changes and seasons, just not proper or normal ones.

So I’ve started a daily weather journal to which I will post each day. There’s also a link at the top of the blogroll, in case you ever get so desperately bored that you want to read the details of Southern California weather. I’ll also throw in earthquakes and wildfires and the blooming of local plants and coyote sightings and other random details of nature. Why, I do not exactly know, except that I’m charmed by the 18th century habit of doing so, and that’s good enough for me.

There had been rain in the forecast for this weekend, but the current models are backing off with respect to the intensity of the system, and the predicted rainfall totals for Newport Beach are now running at less than a tenth of an inch. And I don’t reasonably expect any more appreciable rainfall until the next rainy season starts up in November or so. Damn, damn, damn.

Because I am a great believer in God’s car wash; I leave my van out in the rain, and thus have managed to avoid washing it since last autumn. It’s true that God doesn’t scrub, but I’m willing to forgive Him for this; He doesn’t charge money for raining on my van, I don’t have to tip Him, and I don’t (perish the thought) have to stir my lazy Polish ass to wash the damned thing myself.

But the rain’s been scarce for a while, and the storm I was counting on has petered out. I don’t require that my van be sparkling clean — it’s not a fucking Rolls Royce, for God’s sake — but things are starting to get out of hand. I don’t think even a torrential microburst would help at this point.

Therefore, there is actual washing of the van in my future. The only question that remains is whether I will bite the bullet and pay someone else to do it (and they always give me the stinkeye if the thing is REALLY dirty), or rally my husband and sons to do it as a family. I’m voting for the latter. Because why, apart from garbage disposal, lawn care and vehicle maintenance, do we keep men around the house?

As is well known, I have been lusting after an Oregon Scientific wireless weather station with rain gauge for, like, forever. Family finances being what they are, however, I can’t exactly sell Ben on the idea; there are bills and expenses far more important than the satisfaction of my lust for accurate barometric readings, wind speeds and rainfall totals.

However, I have just been informed by my local National Weather Service webpage that Uncle Sam wants me. The San Diego NWS wants Orange County volunteers with complete weather stations and supporting software to feed in their local readings, thereby aiding in the accurate recording and prediction of weather data in the region.

I tried to sell it to Ben: I don’t want this weather station for me. I want it for AMERICA!

He wasn’t buying. But you have to admit, it was a nice try. And if I get an unexpected chunk of money anytime in the near future, there damned well is a weather station in my future. I may no longer support the current President or the Iraq War, but the National Weather Service is an American institution I can feel good about — anything that justifies the acquisition of expensive weather gadgets has GOT to be a good thing.

Note: This is NOT my photo. I found it here.

For meteorological reasons of which I’m not fully sure, the nature of precipitation in Orange County tends to be particularly showery and unstable, with frequent waterspouts, microbursts, squalls and sun showers. We don’t get low clouds and day-long slow, steady rain; we get showy, spectacular storm cloud formations at one side of the sky with bright sunshine on the other. The weather, when it’s present, moves quickly and changes fast.

Lots of sun showers mean lots of rainbows, and this week the place is positively crawling with them. Yesterday Sam and I came out of the house to see a spectacular double rainbow curving over the tops of the trees bordering our courtyard, and this morning there were more sun showers and more rainbows. For me, they are a positive driving hazard; I don’t know how many times I’ve nearly wrecked the car because I was staring at a rainbow.

I’m a total child when it comes to rainbows, and I’ve chosen to believe they really are omens of happy endings (no, not in the Asian massage sense) and good things to come. I completely believe in omens, but only good ones (life has enough REAL signs of bad things as it is). So, you know, rainbows. And there is another thing I love about Southern California.

Well, the bad news is that winter break is almost over — Sam starts back to school on Monday, and so end the lazy days of sleeping in with the kids. I’ll really miss it, although I dearly need to get my ass back to work and earn some money.

The truly excellent news is that a Pacific storm is meant to hit So Cal over the weekend — actually, a series of three storms in close succession, which is predicted to dump as much as five inches of rain at the beaches, 6-12 inches on the mountain slopes. To give you a sense of perspective, we got 2.22″ in the entire 2006-2007 rainy season, so a five-inch storm is something to talk about. The kids are happy too, since they love the rain as I do. I hope the folks in the burn areas will be all right, but apart from that concern, batten down the hatches and let’s rock and roll. After two drought seasons, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

Coda: weather news and storm history trivia from The Orange County Register.

Christmas was quiet but fairly awesome — at least, it was a success with the kids, which is what really counts. Sam is on school vacation, so we’ve been sleeping in a lot. Winter break for everyone! And there might be rain before the end of it, which would be awesome, needless to say. The weather pattern on the West Coast is changing and the jet stream looks to take a big dip next week, putting So Cal squarely in the path of the next Pacific storm. So, you know, cross your fingers. Not because you care (I’m sure you don’t) but because maybe I’ll stop having on about it.

See you in the New Year.