Joan Didion and the Santa Anas: It's worse than you think.

Kevin and Ezra are right to be puzzled by this Joan Didion paragrpah:

It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination....Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability.

But it's worse than you think. Not only are most Southern Californians totally unimpressed and unfazed by Santa Ana winds, but in the Inland Empire--about 60 miles into the desert from Ezra and Kevin's cozy coastal confines--We have 100+ degree Septembers and 90+ degree Octobers and on days like that the Santa Anas can feel great*. To anybody stuck in Redlands on a 90 degree day when the Santa Anas are blowing, I recommend finding a cold swimming pool, and repeatedly jumping in and out. The breeze can actually lift the rays of oppression right off your body.

*=Obviously they feel less great when something like this is bearing down on your neighborhood. But... I guess you take what you can get.