Thursday, September 3, 2015

THE Surf Report- Early Edition


Labor Day roughly translated means 'surf your brains out'.

SURF:

Well wasn't that a hoot. Good SW swell last weekend (and warm water) was replaced by good Hurricane Jimena swell Tuesday (and warm water). Today we had dying Jimena swell but far north county SD still had head high sets. Tomorrow Jimena continues to die off but we still have fun chest high waves. By Saturday Jimena should be gone, but we have a solid SW swell on it's heels.
Models last week had a good storm in the southern hemisphere and it's been charging up the Pacific ever since. Early forecasts had it being BIG but it's since backed off to just 'overhead'. Oh well. Saturday starts off small but by the afternoon we should have shoulder high sets again. By Sunday it's head high sets. And by Monday morning, overhead sets. I though Labor Day was a day of rest?
We also have Tropical Storm Kevin below Cabo tonight but it's only forecasted to have winds of 60mph. In all likelihood, any swell we get from it this weekend will be lost in the bigger SW swell.
Tides the next few days are 2' at sunrise, up to 5' at 2 PM, and down to 2' at sunset again. And water temps are still a fantastic 75 degrees. About 3-5 degrees above normal. I actually had a wetsuit jacket on Wednesday morning and had to take it off because I was baking. Never had that happen in CA before.

FORECAST:
Hope you get some surf over the holiday weekend 'cause that's about it. Not much on the charts except a couple little storms.
Should get a shot of waist to chest high SW next weekend.
After that there's a similar sized storm forecast models are showing that may give us chest high sets again mid-month. Nothing too exciting unfortunately- but you had good surf already this week- and this weekend- so no complaining. Let's hope the tropics kick back into gear. So what does the Hurley Pro at Trestles look like next week? Mediocre at best. If you liked the 'average' Teahupoo contest, then step right up to Trestles. Make sure to keep up to date on the waves/weather at Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

What an amazing summer. Drizzle so hard it looked like rain. Real rain from the tropics. Great beach weather. Sweltering beach weather. Fog/low clouds. You name it. Can't believe we're almost done with it. Looking forward to a calm winter. Scratch that; El Nino is coming. Before we say goodbye though, we've got a weak cold front moving through tomorrow that will kick up our clouds and cool air temps. Saturday is a transition day and by Sunday we should have nice beach weather with temps in the mid-70's. That lasts most of next week. In a nutshell, Labor Day weekend is looking pretty good with Monday being the nicest day. Wonder if the parking lot at Cardiff will be full?

BEST BET:
Monday. Great weather, warm water, and solid surf. The way a holiday should be.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doesn’t make many mistakes. But when they do, take heed. Like this story from NOAA this week:

It was less than two years ago that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its all-encompassing assessment on the current state of climate change research and made projections for the future climate of our planet. According to the latest from NASA, however, the projections the panel made for a rise in global sea levels of 1 to 3 feet may already be outdated. According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are "locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more." Nerem said experts now think a rise in sea levels toward "the higher end of that range is more likely, and the question remains how that range might have to shift upwards." This is startling news if you are one of the 150 million people on Earth who live near the ocean. Even if you don't live close to the sea, you likely use goods that are manufactured in plants near the water, or vacation at the beach.

What's behind the rising seas? There are three main causes for rising sea levels: The expansion of warmer ocean water, melting mountain glaciers, and ice loss from the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The latter of those causes has scientists at NASA the most concerned, and is a key area of focus in the "intensive research effort" the agency announced on Wednesday. One of those projects, called Oceans Melting Greenland, which goes by the intentional acronym of OMG (ironic, right?) will spend the next six years trying to determine how the Greenland Ice Sheet is contributing to sea level rise. The Jakobshavn Glacier, the fastest moving glacier in Greenland, recently broke off a piece of ice large enough to cover the island of Manhattan in ice roughly 1,000 feet thick, according to the European Space Agency. The glacier drains more ice-melt from Greenland into the ocean and contributes more to sea level rise than any other feature in the Northern Hemisphere. If the entire ice sheet in Greenland melted completely, global sea levels would rise around 20 feet, and while this total loss would likely take many centuries to occur, sea levels would rise "as much as 10 feet in a century or two," according to NASA scientist and ice expert Tom Wagner.

Many climate experts say temperatures are rising faster than at any point in our known history and that it is largely because of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. NASA's increased focus on climate change and rising sea levels is not just about future projections. The agency also is demonstrating the past change in a first-of-its-kind visualization of the entire 23-year satellite record of global sea levels. The agency is using satellite instruments so accurate that NASA Earth Science Division Director Mike Freilich said that if they were "mounted on a jetliner flying at 40,000 feet, they could detect the bump caused by a dime lying flat on the ground." The data gathered reveals that sea levels have already risen nearly 3 inches since 1992. If that doesn't sound like much, remember that a good rule of thumb is: For every inch of sea level rise, you see 100 inches of run-up inland on the coast. But the rise is not uniform. Some places have seen sea levels rise more than 9 inches, while others, like the U.S. West Coast, have actually seen slight decreases in sea level. But before you sell your summer home on Long Island and move to Southern California, you should know that this decrease in sea level was likely temporary. Experts say it was the result of cooler phase in a natural cycle with an unwieldy name: Pacific Decadal Oscillation. That cycle recently switched to a warmer one (giving rise to something called the blob- see the full story here). According to NASA, the West Coast may now start seeing a faster rise in sea level and more than make up for the deficit it has seen over the last 20 years. Long story short- if your home break likes a high tide, you’re in luck. Or if you proposed to your wife on the beach, kiss it goodbye. The beach that is, not your wife.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Ever heard the phrase "It was on FIRE today"? (And I ain't talkin' 'bout Jamie O'Brien's recent exploits at Teahupoo). Here's photographic proof.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
Numero Uno
The Muscles From Brussels
Love Child of Gidget And Dick Dale