I’m in Arizona, but the way I understand it is different.
First the whole area is arid so the air and winds are dry unless a wet low is pushing winds and instead these are generally driven by a High north of the area. The high brings winds from the higher elevation in the inland mountains down from those elevations and as they come to lower elevations they heat up from compression as all winds coming off mountain ranges do.
What is different here is that there are coastal canyons at the weathered west side of these mountain ranges. These canyons act like venturi or puckered lips when you whistle, increasing the wind speed even more. So you have winds that are 20 to 40 at high elevations becoming 40 to 70 as they blow out into the low coastal lands.
This hits the dry arid coastal California lands that have wet-land controls on what can be cleared or burned and you get fires that rage from being wind driven.
Now in the African Sahara desert you might have some winds impacted by mountains, but in general you have equatorial winds driven over vast deserts that just get more and more dry — not very intense in speed — very dry.
I hope my arm chair attempt helps.
I kinda sorta got the impression that the Sahara has a lot less combustible material. Sand doesn’t burn as well as dried scrub brush.
The southern California winds in the news lately are called the Santa Anas.
They originate in what is sometimes referred to as the “high desert”. It is an are north of a line of mountains running from just barely northeast of L.A. for more than 70 miles further east. It is known as the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain rages. The high desert sits north of them. As the fall and winter progresses, the high desert temps drop much lower than the temps south of those mountain ranges, and the temperature differential draws the winds south into the Inland Empire & the L.A. Basin (through major mountain passes through those mountains from the high desert) and west to the coast just west of the high desert.
In their journey west they meet the low coastal mountains (I call them hills) and it is there you find all sorts of little canyons. While there can be the venturi affect on the immediate wind speed in some locations there, there is no such requirement for those little coastal mountains and their minor canyons, when you go further east out in the Inland Empire, were Santa Anas come right off the high desert at 40-70 miles an hour, through large passes like the Cajon Pass.
The major factor is not the structure of the coast, it is the high desert north of the San Gabriel/San Bernardino mountains and east of the little coastal mountains. Minus that feature, the temperature differentials driving the winds would not be born.
My major correction to you is, it is not winds born in the mountain elevations. The main air movement is trying get THROUGH the mountains from north of the mountains.