Fall is failing.
SURF:
Not an exciting start to fall. Cool weather and mediocre little SW and NW swells. Wearing trunks in October is killer though. For comparison's sake, I remember dawn patrolling it, wearing just trunks, in early November during the last big El Nino. Water was 68. Will we beat that this year? Guess we'll find out. Back to the surf though. Fall is trying to get kickstarted with cooler weather and NW swells but it's still a pretty weak effort. Tomorrow we have a little boost from the NW for chest high sets towards SD and smaller background SW.
FORECAST:
Summer isn't dead just yet. A couple storms are on the charts that should give us chest high sets around the 8th of October and hopefully head high sets by the 12th of October. We may also get a small NW swell by the 12th too. The tropics have had some rumblings lately but no swell is headed our way. But the water is above average down there and we still have about a month left of hurricane season. So mind your manners and don't jinx it! Make sure to keep up to date on the waves/weather at Twitter/North County Surf.
WEATHER:
Off and on. That pretty much sums up our weather the next 7 days. We have a weak cold front moving through northern California tomorrow which will kick up our clouds down here and make it a little breezy and cool. No real news other than the fact it will feel more like fall than summer on Friday. Saturday warms up a little bit and it will feel a little more like summer than fall. Models then show a low pressure system setting up in central California Sunday/Monday which may give us a few showers in southern California. Best case would be 1/4". On the Mike Glenn Rain Scale ('MGRS' patent pending)- 1/4" isn't going to do much to our drought situation. (MGRS = 1/4' is weak, 1/2" is a good rain, 1" is a solid soaking, and 2" is El Nino, cars floating down the street stuff). The sun comes back out the 2nd half of next week and we're due for beach weather again. Off and on.
BEST BET:
Wait 'til next weekend as new SW fills in.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Fall is here, El Nino has been here all year, and I’m impatient. When is it going to start raining cats and dogs?! I normally see our first good rain just before Halloween. I always think it’s going to rain on my groms a week before trick or treating and it always arrives a few days before the big holiday. So what does a normal October supposed to look like? The San Diego National Weather Service can help us out here:
October is the last of the dry months and is usually a transitional period with variable weather... a mixture that includes weather from the previous dry months with a preview of the upcoming wet months. The normal daily maximum temperature is 72.8 degrees and the normal daily minimum is 60.6 degrees with a mean monthly temperature of 66.7 degrees. Extremes for the month range from 107 degrees in 1961 to 43 degrees in 1971. There are 2 days of measurable rain on the average... including one day of thundershowers. These wet days usually occur late in the month as storm systems from the Pacific Northwest move farther south. The average rainfall is 0.57 inch. This is 0.42 of inch more than September (a normal September that is- not our end of the world September we just had with 1.24 inches) and 0.44 less than November. The greatest monthly total was 4.98 inches in 2004. The minimum is zero which last occurred in 2009. On October 3, 1858... a category one hurricane struck San Diego... the only documented hurricane to strike the west coast of the united states (so we still have some hope for wild weather this month). October has plenty of sunshine with 68 percent of possible. October averages 14 clear days... 10 partly cloudy and 7 cloudy days. During the month there are an average of 3 days of heavy fog. There is an average of one day of clear... dry weather when ‘Santa Ana’ winds push temperatures into the 90s. Relative humidity averages 75 percent in the early morning... 60 percent near noon and 62 percent in the late afternoon. Wind speeds average 6.5 mph. The strongest wind for the month occurred on the 20th and was from the south at 39 mph in 2004 (which probably had to do with that 4.98” of rain in October of 2004 also).
So there you have it. October is a transition month and is fairly mild. But with an El Nino winter on the horizon, hopefully things get in to gear soon.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
I remember watching the Katin contest in Huntington back in the 80's where Curren did that legendary off the lip and sprayed the spectators on the pier. I also remember Michael Ho trunking it during his heats. In the middle of February. Which brings up the question: If the surf is firing and you forgot your wetsuit, do you paddle out and risk hypothermia? In the case of Michael Ho, yes. But the surf wasn't firing that day at the Katin contest; it was HB for God's sake! Can't figure that one out.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
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