Diablo wind

So called because in the San Francisco Bay area the wind blows from the direction of Mount Diablo and the Diablo Range, which ultimately gets its name from Spanish diablo (“devil”), the hot and fiery connotations of which may have reinforced the use of the name for hot, firestorm-causing winds.

Diablo wind (plural Diablo winds)

1. A hot, dry (downslope) wind from the northeast that occurs in northern and central California, sometimes causing firestorms.

   Coordinate terms: Santa Ana wind, sundowner

   • 1998 02, McCormack's Guides, Incorporated, Marin, Napa, and Sonoma, McCormack's Guides, →ISBN:

     […] a Diablo Wind. A Diablo was responsible for the great Oakland-Berkeley fire of 1991. Earlier in this century Mill Valley in Marin County and Berkeley lost whole neighborhoods to northeaster fires. The winds are short in duration  […]

   • 2005 January 1, Charles Scawthorn, John M. Eidinger, Anshel Schiff, Fire Following Earthquake, ASCE Publications, →ISBN, page 61:

     […] Diablo winds, which are the local name for a wind technically known as a foehn - a hot dry wind coming down off a mountain range, rising in temperature as it descends (adiabatic compression). On September 17, 1922, a Diablo wind condition existed and a fire began about 2 pm in wildlands in the hills above the City. […]

   • 2005, Tye W. Parzybok, Weather Extremes in the West:

     Northern CA has the Diablo wind, a hot, dry NE wind that sweeps down the hills east of SF through the canyons of the Diablo Range, […] . [A fire was] caused mainly by a Diablo wind - charred the Oakland and Berkeley Hills east of San Francisco on September 17, 1923. High winds blew catastrophic fires into the northeast section of Berkeley. Within three hours fire had consumed 577 homes. This fire […]

   • 2016 March 31, Stephen J. Pyne, California: A Fire Survey, University of Arizona Press, →ISBN, page 161:

     […] a Diablo wind drove flames through the Berkeley Hills and into the campus of the University of California. Some 3,100 acres and 584 houses burned. Ten years later a Diablo-driven fire scorched a thousand acres and five homes. In 1946 […]

• 1998 October 21, Jim Carlton, Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders, Harper Collins, →ISBN, page 3:

  [It is called] a "Diablo wind," because the range those winds pour down is called the Diablo. "Diablo" is a Spanish word meaning "devil," so these are devil winds and appropriately named because they can spark wicked firestorms that wreak […]