Having fun yet?
SURF:
Don't you love it when we have fun surf for weeks on end? Makes work so much more bearable.
FORECAST:
After a fun weekend of small but fun combo surf, we get another pulse of NW groundswell for more waist to chest high waves late Monday into Tuesday.
WEATHER:
Looks like our summer weather is over for the time being. Unfortunately we don't have winter type weather either on the horizon. Look for the clouds to thicken up this weekend with a chance of drizzle or light showers late Saturday into Monday morning. We get a break in the weather early in the work week with more sun and temps back to 70 but then the clouds come back the 2nd half of next week. What does all of this mean? Mild weather with off and on clouds and no rain.
BEST BET:
Little swells off and on the next 10 days but late next week looks fun with the combo swells.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
To continue on the rain theme from last week's THE Surf Report (or the lack of rain I should say), our snowpack in the Sierras isn't doing much better. It started off with a bang in December, then January limped in, and February looks like roadkill at this point. Most locations in northern California are reporting just 20% of normal snowpack this time of year. And if the season ended today, we'd just be at 15% capacity. Not enough to keep our lawns green down here or those swimming pools full this summer. So is this a sign of things to come?
Scientists have bad news for West Coasters in the grips of the worst drought in decades: The worst is yet to come. The record-shattering drought currently gripping California is NOTHING compared to the "mega-drought" that's expected to envelop the Southwest and Great Plains over the next 35 years, NASA revealed Thursday. The full study, ominously named "Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains," was published in Science Advances. The study, compiled by scientists from the space agency, Cornell University and Columbia University, predicts an 80% chance that the Great Plains and the American Southwest will endure a major weather shift beginning in 2050, which could spark massive wildfires and water shortages if the current pace of climate change continues. Most alarming: The forecasted drought accompanying the weather shift could be of a severity not seen within the past 1,000 years. "We really need to start thinking in longer-term horizons about how we're going to manage it," said study coauthor Toby R. Ault, per the Washington Post. "This is a slow-moving natural hazard that humans are used to dealing with and used to managing." A mega-drought, which is a drought that lasts for several decades instead of the usual three years, causes ecological and agricultural damage on a planetary scale. "I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be," Ault said at a press conference, according to Business Insider. "I look at these future mega-droughts like a slow-moving natural disaster. We have to put mega-droughts into the same category as other natural disasters that can be dealt with through risk management.” How did they figure this out? Scientists studied past droughts using tree rings to determine how much rain fell hundreds (and thousands) of years ago. They then ran that data through 17 computer models of potential future temperatures across North America, which then predicted this bleak outlook. "Natural droughts like the 1930s Dust Bowl and the current drought in the Southwest have historically lasted maybe a decade or a little less," said Ben Cook, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, according to Business Insider. "What these results are saying is we're going to get a drought similar to those events, but it is probably going to last at least 30 to 35 years." This could change. The predictions are dire, but not exact. Weather patterns could change directions, global warming could be mitigated and even just one El Niño out West could disrupt a season of drought in the entire region. Still, a drought of some sort is certain. "We are the first to do this kind of quantitative comparison between the projections and the distant past, and the story is a bit bleak," said Jason Smerdon, another of the study's authors and a climate scientist from Columbia University, according to Business Insider. "Even when selecting for the worst mega-drought-dominated period, the 21st century projections make the mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the Garden of Eden." Cold and soggy Seattle is looking pretty good right about now. Let the Chargers go to L.A.- I'm a Seahawks fan all of a sudden.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Pop quiz! The guy in the picture with his arms up is:
A. Mindsurfing that wave and touching the roof of the barrel.
B. Got his arms in the air like he just don't care.
C. Thinks he's getting robbed because he only brought a 5'8" twin fin with him.
And the correct answer is:
D. Doing what any stoked surfer would do and screaming his lungs off.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Taking the Lead On This One
Got Picked By NASA To Go To Mars!
Can Turn A 3 Into A 9
