THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Sure glad winter's here.

SURF:
I've never seen so much rain in my life. Considering 2011-2014 was the driest 4 years on record, my statement doesn't seem that silly now does it? Now that the ocean has cleaned up, it's time to get back in the surf.

We have a new fun SW swell filling in tonight for chest high waves tomorrow. We also have some NW windswell filling in too so fun waves will be had tomorrow into Saturday. Sunday stays fun but drops a notch to waist high+ surf. Our weather starts to warm up too so it will be a nice weekend. And all the rain recently hasn't cooled off our water temps yet as they still are hovering around 75 degrees.

Tides the next few days are 2' at sunrise, up to 4.5' at noon, and down to 1' at sunset. Oh- and fall starts on Monday- so we'll have more darkness than sun around here. Sun comes up at 7 and goes down at 7. Make sure to keep up to date on the waves/weather at Twitter/North County Surf.

FORECAST:
So what does our future hold? You like weather? Great! More on that below. You like waves? Not so great. No storms last week in the southern hemisphere and no hurricanes this week in the tropics have got us in a wave drought.

There was a little bump off Antarctica a couple days ago that will give us more waist high SW mid-week. Yippee. The only good news is that we're at the peak of hurricane season AND we've been active this month AND it's an El Nino year- so maybe something will pop up off Baja the next few days for surf next weekend.

WEATHER:

I'm just floored on how much rain we've had recently and in 2015 in general. Make sure to read the 'NEWS OF THE WEEK' below for the full scoop. In the meantime, enjoy the great weather this weekend as we're due on Monday for- you guessed it- more rain. Look for sunny warm conditions on Saturday then the tropical clouds increase Sunday/Monday. By Tuesday we should get rain again. Most likely over an inch. Again. And if you're wondering- yes, my lawn looks terrific. Nothing like nature's sprinklers. By late in the week we should be back to normal around here- whatever that means.
 
BEST BET:
Tomorrow looks like a good day to leave work early.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

What a long strange trip it’s been. Just when you thought we were in a drought…

BAM! Along comes El Nino. Of course everyone thinks of El Nino as being the big drenching Godzilla of a winter but the active hurricane activity has helped ease the pain. But let’s back up a bit. The unusual 2015 rains actually started before summer. San Diego normally receives 10” of rain a year and as 2014 ended, we were only around 7”; our 4th straight year of drought. Then as 2015 hit, January and February, normally 2 of our wettest months only gave us a meager ¾” or rain. Then March came along with a late season 1” (it was like the atmosphere was taunting us) and April was back to a dismal 0.02”. It looked like we were in for our 5th year of drought and we needed the Carlsbad desalination plant to be multiplied by 10 as well as Governor Brown telling us to let our lawns die before summer hit. Well wouldn’t you know it, the warmer than usual ocean temperatures (thanks to El Nino) brought almost 2.5” of rain to San Diego in May. Of course that had to be an anomaly. No way lightning could strike twice as we approached summer- our driest months of the year. June was right on track with a Death Valley like 0.04” of precipitation so May HAD TO BE an anomaly, right?

And then El Nino kicked in with Hurricane Dolores in July. San Diego got HAMMERED with thunderstorms that sat for hours over the city resulting in over 1.5” of rain. Now I was becoming a believer. We hadn’t even hit the peak of our hurricane season yet (that occurs later this month) so there was a good chance of more summer rains coming our way from the tropics. August was quiet as usual then Hurricane Linda formed last week giving us good surf- and another good drenching.

San Diego picked up another 1.25” of rain. And we’re not over yet as you probably saw in the weather report above. Thanks to El Nino and the 12 named tropical storms this year (and a jaw dropping 7 of them being major hurricanes with winds over 110 mph), we’ve got a head start to our rainy El Nino winter here in San Diego with over 7” of rain so far in 2015…

PIC OF THE WEEK:

These gems are near a major international city. Which makes you wonder how our little towns here in North County and southern OC are absolute zoos on the smallest of days. Maybe all the people from the big cities are hanging out here on the weekends? Don't blame 'em.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
Invigorated
Candidate
Pulled Off Slater's Trick This Morning