O.K. it's a great place to live sunny,,ground shakes once in a while,,,,sometimes the hills catch fire , followed by a mud slide,,,,but did any of you guy's out there get "blown" away by the Santa Anna winds

Its worst in the foothills and areas just west of the divide. And those wind speeds are usually pretty exaggerated, just like those gust AKA peak wind overstated wind speeds of hurricanes and tornadoes in other parts of the country. Makes for good ad-time-selling drama on the nightly news. And we all love drama on the news, right? Thank you Mr. Murdoch for singlehandedly destroying the concept of "journalism".

There are a few troughs between certain mountain peaks, below which such speeds might be observed, but highly unlikely and not very inhabited locations.

Its pretty legit for Santa Ana (a different type of wind, but not unlike the experience of a scirroco, or foehn/fohn for our euro friends) for winds to get up around 60 - 90 mph (peak), however.

Near the ocean during Santa Ana conditions, it can be gusty, but not usually very strong (except in certain areas), and it can actually be dead calm. As in, even less wind than usual. This was the case for where I am - air was hot, dry, and eerily still.

In SoCal, the weather is so boringly good most of the time, that when its even a little out of norm, people make a big deal out of it. Yeah, its lame.

The winds have been brutal up here in norcal/sacramento area as well past few days.

Meh. Its always windy where I live. Always. Some say Simi is an old Indian word for wind. The past couple of days haven't been particularly bad. At least none of my shingles have blown off - yet.