If you’ve been watching the news, you have been seeing some spectacular and scary scenes of fires burning across mountainsides of southern California under the influence of strong winds called Santa Ana winds, which blow down the mountains due to strong high pressure over the western US. If you are interested in learning more about it, you can read Dr. Marshall Shepherd’s explanation at Forbes.com here.

Smoke plume from Southern California wildfires. Source: NASA and Chris Warren, TWC.