Didion

"Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are."

Those were the days of the race riots, of tensions made worse by the dry heat of summer and the scorching Santa Ana winds. Race riots are not so common in the US nowadays, but plenty of people are still pretty close to the edge, in one way or another.