Talk:Santa Ana wind

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Seems to me the link to Santa Ana Winds (the band) needs some disambiguation from the page it's on?

Contents

[edit] Season

The Santa Ana winds usually start in late September and occur into January.Rsduhamel 04:17, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

On 21 Oct 2004 large section of this article was deleted by 67.171.229.13. I reverted it to the previous version (20:38, 25 Sep 2004). Rsduhamel 07:41, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Adiabatic Warming

The link in the article goes to a different article, which doesn't seem to explain what it is (to me, anyway).

[edit] Etymology

We on Wiktionary have done a bit of research. The "Santana" etymology is almost certainly an urban legend. It's much more likely that the original form was "Santa Ana wind" and that "Santana" is a perfectly ordinary contraction. The main holes in the "Santana" story are:

  • No one seems to know what native languages were involved.
  • Sanatanas does appear to be Spanish, but Satanàs is much more common. Note that it's stressed differently from Santana (but then, buckaroo and vamoose also shifted stress)
  • The name Santa Ana goes back centuries in the area, and Santana is a natural contraction of it. It would be surprising if Santa Ana didn't get turned into Santana.
  • Checking google and google books, the only hits for "vientos de Sanatanas" are in versions of the "Santana winds" theory. "vientos de Satanàs" also appears very rare. If the Santana theory is correct, you'd expect to find the Spanish phrase from which it was supposed to have been borrowed.
  • Checking google books, Santa Ana wind appears in the 1800s, while Santana wind doesn't appear until 1958.

See here for more discussion. -Dmh 16:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a reference for the "Santanas" theory on Google books. I'm a little bit reluctant to reference it directly, as it might give the impression that the "Santanas" theory is correct. As above, it's most likely wrong, but I'm not sure where there's a good source for the "Santa Ana" theory. Right now the text is weasely, but bringing in the arguments above might make the eytmology section disproportionately large. OTOH, the "Santanas" folk etymology is well-known, so perhaps it deserves more discussion than it would otherwise get. -Dmh 07:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
The link to the Wiktionary debate does not show anything for Santana. If someone finds the debate, can you please post it here? Thanks. Gigglesworth 20:42, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

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As a native Angeleno, I can tell you that the winds are univerally spelled "Santa Ana," but are generally pronounced "Santana." I just marked it up to all the other weird pronunciations we have, starting with Sepulveda Blvd. A good way to spot people not from the region. Also, if I remember my Spanish correctly, they don't insert glottal stops between identical adjacent vowels, so the two a's would tend to merge in pronunciation in the native language anyway.

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The unsigned author above believes that Santa Ana is generally pronounced "Santana". As a native Angeleno myself, I can say that during wildfire season, broadcast news reporters consistently pronounce the Spanish name as two distinct words, just as they would for nearby cities Santa Monica or Santa Clarita. I speak Spanish fluently and can add that the word merging that would occur in Spanish would be for the same reason as in English: laziness in pronunciation rather than being an accepted contraction of such words. On the matter of "vientos de Sanatanas", the phrase would leave the Spanish-language reader with the impulse to "correct it" to "vientos de Satanás". It seems incongruous, though, that the early Christian missionaries - that named nearly all Southern California areas - would break from their tradition of honoring saints to name the winds after a daemon. Just a thought. 66.134.232.226 00:53, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I grew up in the San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara regions, within the influence of these winds. Locals and the local meteorologists use both terms, 'Santa Ana' and 'Santana'. I've been a life-long Santanaista, although it's hard to maintain this position considering the evidence presented above. Thanks for the research! Gigglesworth 20:39, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

As another native Angeleno, growing up in the 1950s, I never heard or saw "Santa Ana" in reference to the wind until I was an adult. To us, it was just "the Santana." In 1957 or 1958 I was given a fire preparedness book (and a junior fire ranger badge!) published by the County of Orange that referred to the wind as "Santana", accompanied by a line drawing of a devil's head blowing. Jim 16:42, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

As above I grew up in Los Angeles in the 30's and 40's and it was always referred to as the "Santana" winds. I was told that the winds were named thus after General Santana who was known as a particularly nasty man. Often he was called a "devil" and so the winds were also known as the "Devil Winds" or ----Santana winds. I would think that the whole controversy could easily be settled by going into the weather reports of back issues of the LA Times or the Herald Examiner.

[edit] Not a Fohn

A Fohn wind results from precipitation on the windward side of a mountain range which releases latent heat into the atmosphere which is then warmer on the leeward side (e.g. the Chinook or the original Fohn). The Santa Ana winds do not originate in precipitation, but in the bone-dry high deserts. The Santa Ana is actually not a Foehn. It has in common only the adiabatic compressive heating caused when the air descends from the high desert down to sea level. Tmangray (talk) 06:47, 27 December 2007 (UTC)