Very early on the morning of December 1, I was awakened by a strange moaning. As I surfaced, I heard the continuous rustling of foliage and then registered the police and fire sirens. (It's amazing how you learn to filter out a sound that loud and distinctive.) I felt the house shudder and then my waking brain went, ‘Wind!' followed by ‘Clothes!'

I rushed out into the early morning dark, hurting my back a little as I wrestled the heavy clothes rack into the house. Looking out, I marvelled at how the trees were bent over, with occasional gusts seeming as if they'd lift the entire house.

I later learned that some of these gusts were over 100 km/h — hurricane force. The power came and went a few times, and I got back to bed to fall into an uneasy sleep, only to keep waking, hearing more and more sounds from outside. The sirens were near continuous, things were blowing off our roof, and the hollow screams of gusts got higher and higher pitched as the wind picked up speed.

Devil wind

We were experiencing an unusually bad bout of the seasonal Santa Ana winds, the ones that are known for fanning the region's infamous wild fires. They have a dusty, gritty dryness to them that sets your throat, and indeed the rest of you, on edge. They are usually hot, and quite suddenly raise the temperature of otherwise cool evenings to uncomfortable levels. That sound they make and the sudden forceful gusts add to the unease, and it's no wonder they are also known as the ‘devil wind'.

When some objects came crashing into our bedroom windows, not breaking them, but terrifying us, we had enough and just got out of bed. It was 3.30 in the morning, but we were due to get up in less than a couple of hours anyway. My wife had an early morning flight to catch, but we could not imagine a plane taking off in this weather.

While Los Angeles airport reported power cuts and closed runways, the airline blithely claimed all flights were leaving as scheduled. After a long time on the phone and checking around on the web, we finally moved the flight to the afternoon. Not long after, the sun rose and the wind died out. We looked at each other in the sudden silence, suddenly wondering whether we had overreacted.

Later that day driving around our neighbourhood, we clearly hadn't.

There were fallen branches and downed trees everywhere. Many of them had hit houses and cars. In fact, the house just two doors down had a tree fall on it, luckily it didn't cause too much damage. Most of the traffic lights weren't working, and wouldn't work for the next few days. Some areas wouldn't have power for a week.

As I write this, there's the occasional evil moaning outside, and the forecast says we're in for some more wind. I'm surprised by how nervous that makes me, and I think how it must be for people, especially children, who've had trees fall on their houses or otherwise had property damaged (there were few, if any, directly related serious injuries).

For us, the lasting damage from the storm was that our recycling bin vanished that night, never to return. I'll take it as a sign that Mother Nature has an ironic sense of humour, because frankly, she really scared us that night.

 

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the US.