Santa Ana's.

Maxwell ended over two weeks ago, but life has been pretty much a whirlwind since then. This is finally a quiet week where I can catch up on a few things, like this blog and cleaning up around the outside of the house. A few days after returning from tour, the neighborhood was visited by Santa Ana winds.

For those who don't know what Santa Ana's are, they're very warm strong winds that blow in off the desert to L.A.'s northwest. It happens every year around the start of fall. The winds are strong enough to topple trees, and knock out power lines.

I remember the day two weeks ago when it happened, I was sitting in the office doing work on an commercial shoot that landed in my lap (next blog) when around 4 in the afternoon, I heard the first wind blow through. I looked out my window and in the distance I could see a wall of dust and debris heading my way. My first thought was a sand storm in Baghdad. Normally it's just wind, but since the Station Fire burned down all the brush in the hills and valleys above us, there was nothing left to keep down the dust and ashes. It was all in the air and heading our way.

It made for a long night. Every now and again, you'd hear the house buffeted by a blast of wind, and you'd hear branches from the surrounding trees creak in the wind. The ladders I had leaning up on the back of the house would thump when the wind would pick them up and drop them back against the wall.

Ah the Santa Ana's. I'm sure there will be more this season, but at least we survived the first round with no damage. But here's some photo's of the aftermath.Although this is just a small sampling of what we found littered about the house. The pine tree in our front yard pretty much dropped all it's dead needles on everything.Including the bed of my truck.And the hood. To this day I'm still picking needles out of the little crevasses in the hood.

Here's a picture of the mountain behind our house. You can't really see it in the picture, but there's still a dust cloud lingering around from all the loose dirt and soot.You can also see the difference caused by the fire. The smaller hill in front didn't burn in the fire, but the mountain in back did. You can see how the hill is slightly green with shrubs. Normally the mountain would look the same.