A Blustery Day

We don’t get a lot of weather here in Southern California.  It’s basically dry, calm and sunny 90% of the year.

 This does make meteorology a rather unremarkable and fairly predictable career,  so naturally the local weather guys have learned to play up their roles a little bit.  When there is a slight variation to the norm it becomes a major event; a slight breeze and  a wind advisory is issued; coastal fog mixes with city smog to become the “marine layer” and a rare day of rain is a major storm.  

This week however, we had  genuine excitement in Pasadena because we actually had some real weather.  Santa Ana winds are a Southern Californian phenomenon that occur every Fall – usually hot dry winds famous for fanning the flames of those forest fires that regularly threaten celebrity homes up in the Hollywood Hills.

A wind advisory is usually issued for anything over five miles an hour which is hardly likely to  ruffle that immaculate Californian hair, so when this particular Santa Ana wind advisory was issued, nobody took much notice.  Batten down the hatches, said  Barbie the TV weather girl; tie your patio furniture down announced her team mate Ken.  Oh yeh?

Come about nine o-clock in the evening I noticed it had got a bit noisy outside; the palm trees were flapping recklessly about as the first of several sun loungers took off across the pool. Gusts of wind continued to rock the building all night. At seven o’clock the next morning Pasadena looked decidedly worse for wear. Local news reports told of blocked roads, broken power lines and numerous cars and houses all damaged by a positive plethora of falling trees.  Gusts of up to 90 miles an hour had been recorded in the night and a State of Emergency had been declared.  To the teenager’s delight  all schools were closed.

Fortunately there were no stories of human injuries or fatalities – remarkable really considering the number of trees that had actually come down.

So why so much destruction from a few gusts of high wind? Apparently a lot of it was to do with shallow root systems.  Rather unsurprisingly a lot of the trees growing up through Pasadena’s concrete sidewalks, and artistically planted on those nicely manicured suburban front lawns are not native to California.  The natural landscape in the foothills area is “chapparal”, Mediterranean style heathland dotted with low growing drought tolerant evergreens. 

As a non-native species myself I fully sympathise with these imported trees who find it so hard to put down roots in the inhospitable Southern Californian environment.  Planted to make the place look pretty and forced to survive on a supply of water derived almost entirely from domestic garden sprinklers, even in winter these deciduous trees have retained a fair amount of leaves  making them decidedly top heavy.  A stronger than normal puff of wind and over they go, taking half the sidewalk with them.

So whilst the city of Pasadena sweeps up; the insurance assessors and lawyers get to work, and the Mexican gardeners rub their hands together with glee, what  lessons can be learned from this catastrophe?

There’s no point re-filling those gaping holes in the street and on those manicured front lawns with yet another ornamental cherry tree.  It might sound too obvious, but my advice would be go native and plant a tumbleweed.