The sundowner winds in Santa Barbara, California, and wildfires during 5-9 May 2009

The south slopes of the Santa Ynez Mountains experience mild to strong downslope winds a few times during the year. Known locally as Sundowners, they typically occur during spring and summer seasons and have occasionally reached severe levels. During strong to severe Sundowners, the main danger is not from the wind, but from fire advancing downslope towards the city of Santa Barbara and the surrounding communities. A brush fire started on the mountains above the city of Santa Barbara on May 5 2009 and was quickly driven by intense sundowner winds. This paper will discuss this event and show numerical simulations with Penn State University/National Center for Atmospheric Research (PSU/NCAR) Mesoscale Model version 5 (MM5).