Trick or Treat this weekend. Depends what you're in to.
SURF:
More fun surf this past week. New NW filled in on Sunday and rolled through Tuesday before backing off mid-week.
Then a couple bumps of small SW hit our shores and today we were left with waist high combo swell. Tomorrow is the same and we get semi-clean conditions. Our first 'storm' of the season then comes in late Halloween night and we get showers and wind on Saturday (more on that below in the 'WEATHER' section). Look for the surf to be small and junky Saturday morning then the windswell picks up from the NW and we've got bumpy overhead surf to deal with. Sunday things start to clean up and we've got quickly dropping overhead surf and sunny skies. Water temps are STILL holding at 70 degrees which has to be some sort of record for the upcoming November 1st weekend. BUT... with all the NW wind on Saturday, water temps may drop quick.
Tides the next few days are 3' at sunset, dropping slightly to 2' mid-day then up to 4.5' mid-afternoon and down to 3' at sunset. Make sure to keep up to date on the waves/weather at
Twitter/North County Surf.FORECAST:
After the NW cleans up on Sunday, it drops pretty quick on Monday and the middle of the week looks small.
Charts have some more NW arriving late Wednesday into Thursday for more shoulder high sets.
Models also show our 22nd named hurricane of the season 'Vance' taking shape tonight. Unfortunately, just as Vance hits category 1 status and heads into our surf window, it will take an abrupt right turn into Mainland Mexico. Not predicting any real surf out of this one.
Further out, charts show a couple little southern hemi swells taking shape under Oz/New Zealand and we may get small inconsistent SW next weekend. Oh boy!
WEATHER:
All signs point to our 1st rain this season Rain being a relative term as it looks like we'll only get 0.10-0.25" at best late Friday into Saturday. The real story is the wind which will blow around 25mph here. Sunday cleans up and we get cool sunny skies. The rest of next week looks like typical San Diego November weather- sunny skies and temps in the mid-70's.
BEST BET:
Sunday as the NW starts to drop but conditions improve. Or a smaller but cleaner NW next Thursday.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
I did a beach clean up in Leucadia this summer with the crew from Ocean Minded (R.I.P.) and we picked up a ton of trash. Figuratively, not literally. But a team of scientists recently DID pick up a ton of trash, literally, not figuratively, to the tune of 57 tons. That's 114,000 pounds. Of junk. Offshore of the Hawaiian Islands. Yes- the mecca of surfing. Here's the scoop from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
A team of 17 NOAA divers sailing aboard NOAA Ship Oscar Elton Sette has returned from a 33-day mission to remove marine debris from Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaii, a World Heritage Site and one of the largest marine conservation areas in the world. In total, they removed approximately 57 tons of derelict fishing nets and plastic litter from the monument’s tiny islands and atolls, sensitive coral reefs and shallow waters. “The amount of marine debris we find in this remote, untouched place is shocking,” said Mark Manuel, operations manager for NOAA Fisheries Coral Reef Ecosystem Division and chief scientist for the mission. “Every day, we pulled up nets weighing hundreds of pounds from the corals. We filled the dumpster on the Sette to the top with nets, and then we filled the decks. There’s a point when you can handle no more, but there’s still a lot out there.”At Pearl and Hermes Atoll, the divers encountered and rescued three sea turtles tangled in different nets.
They also spent several days removing a 28-foot by 7-foot “super net” that extended 16 feet deep and weighed 11½ tons. The net, which had to be cut it into three pieces and towed separately back to the Sette, had destroyed coral in the atoll and posed a huge wildlife entanglement risk. On the shorelines of Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, also part of the monument, the team surveyed and removed nearly 6¼ tons of plastic trash, paying special attention to the bottle caps and cigarette lighters that are commonly eaten by birds. They removed and counted thousands of pieces of plastic, including 7,436 hard plastic fragments, 3,758 bottle caps, 1,469 plastic beverage bottles and 477 lighters. The divers worked out of small boats launched from the Sette, systematically surveying coral reefs at Maro Reef, Pearl and Hermes Atoll and Midway Atoll by swimming and tow-boarding. They used maps marked with GIS locations that were based on 15 years of data on net accumulation hot spots and weather trends. Once the divers located a net -- some of which were massive, tangled balls of several nets -- they relied on their own physical strength and on ropes to remove it from the coral and into the boat. NOAA has led this mission every year since 1996, removing a total of 904 tons of marine debris, including this year’s haul. The nets are an entanglement hazard for monk seals, turtles and seabirds that depend on the shallow coral reef ecosystem for survival. They also break and damage corals as they drift through the currents, snagging on anything in their path. Once they have settled, they can smother the corals and prevent growth. “This mission is critical to keeping marine debris from building up in the monument,” said Kyle Koyanagi, Pacific Islands regional coordinator for NOAA’s Marine Debris Program. “Hopefully we can find ways to prevent nets from entering this special place, but until then, removing them is the only way to keep them from harming this fragile ecosystem.” After the nets are unloaded from the Sette, they will be used as fuel to generate electricity as part of Hawaii’s Nets to Energy partnership with Covanta Energy and Schnitzer Steel. NOAA has sent the derelict nets from this mission to Nets to Energy since 2002, which has powered homes in Hawaii as a result. The team also recovered two 30-foot boats at Pearl and Hermes Atoll, which are suspected to have come from Japan as a result of the 2011 tsunami. Two additional boats were also spotted but unable to be recovered. Following the mission, NOAA scientists will inspect the boats and work with the Japan consulate to determine their origin. Similar boats have turned up in Hawaii, the U.S. West Coast, and Canada over the past three years. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, in addition to being an important cultural site for Native Hawaiians, give shelter to more than 7,000 marine species, including endangered Hawaiian monk seals, 14 million seabirds, rare and threatened land birds, and green sea turtles. They include 5,178 square miles of the healthiest and least disturbed coral reef habitat in U.S. waters. They are also virtually pristine, except for an estimated 52 metric tons of derelict fishing gear that accumulates in the monument from sources around the Pacific Ocean every year. There is no estimate of how much plastic washes up on the islands, but they are heavily littered with buoys, bottles, toys, flip-flops, crates, and other trash, despite the islands being uninhabited. Marine debris is a threat to our environment, navigation safety, the economy and human health. Huge amounts of consumer plastics, metals, rubber, paper, textiles, derelict fishing gear, vessels and other lost or discarded items enter the marine environment every day, making marine debris one of the most widespread, but preventable, problems facing the ocean and waterways. NOAA Fisheries, NOAA’s Ocean Service and NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, work together on this mission to protect the marine environment and keep our ocean resilient.
BEST OF THE BLOG:
One of the first stories I did a few years ago on the North County Surf Blog was about a couple of friends of mine who headquartered their creative agency in Encinitas so they could be closer to the surf. What sets them apart from other companies? They pay their employees to go explore the world. Like Teahupoo if you dare. Or J-Bay like you always wanted to see. Or that weird wave garden in the middle of the Spanish forest (that would be my deal). Want to see why the Union Tribune, Fast Company, and a 100 other media outlets are telling their story lately? Get the scoop on the North County Surf Blog as well as a more in-depth THE Surf Report in the blog below!
PIC OF THE WEEK:
This is the kind of chocolate I hope I get for Halloween. Look at that buttery sweet goodness!
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Casanova
Waiting For The Great Pumpkin In The Swami's Pumpkin Patch
Surfing Waimea At the Stroke of Midnight With Brock on Halloween
