THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Blow for blow.

SURF:
It's like a title fight out there. A little bit of NW windswell, a little bit of SW groundswell, a little bit of NW groundswell, some sun, some clouds, some early morning offshore winds, some onshore winds- not sure really sure who's in charge here.

We saw a touch of everything this past week. Yesterday we had NW groundswell show up for good shoulder high waves and overhead sets in SD- along with great conditions. Today the NW groundwell backed off while the clouds, windswell, and wind increased due to a cold front moving through the interior western states. For Friday, the NW windswell peaks for overhead sets and that quickly dies on Saturday.

As it does, we have a new fun SW swell for Sunday in the chest high range. Weather will finally be nice too. Fun little waves this weekend with nice conditions is on tap.

Tides the next few days are 0' at sunrise, up to 3' at lunch, and down to 1' at sunset. Water temps are still 60 degrees.

FORECAST:
Busy week coming up with various NW/SW swells on the chart. First up is the leftover SW from Sunday that will continue on to Monday.

We also have new NW arriving but the conditions may be suspect (more on that below). We should see some head high sets.

The SW continues Tuesday and Wednesday has smaller leftovers but will be rideable.

By Thursday we have more NW arriving and the SW starts to pick up again from a storm in the southern hemisphere today. Look for head high sets again. The NW holds into Friday as the SW continues to build for overhead sets. Saturday looks fun as the SW holds and the NW backs off and late next weekend it starts to drop.

The storms in the Aleutians should quiet down by then but Antarctica will stay busy with another head high SW mid-month. Make sure to keep up to date on the changing conditions at Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

Spring is acting like, well, spring. Storms are retreating N as we head towards summer so we just get the tail end down here. Another front is moving through northern CA tonight and we're just getting the clouds and breeze down here. Things will clear up this weekend for sunny skies and temps in the low 70's. We get another weak front for Monday/Tuesday and great weather for mid-week. Models then show another front passing by to the N next weekend for more clouds and a breeze down here again. Just like this weekend! Boring.

BEST BET:
Lots of surf next week but conditions may be iffy early in the week. With new good NW/SW on the charts though for Thursday-Saturday late next week, that would be my call. So I'm claiming it.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

More than half off all beaches in Southern California could disappear by the end of the century due to sea-level rise, according to a study published Monday in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

As a result of sea-level rise, up to 67 percent of beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego could be completely eroded back to sea cliffs or coastal infrastructure by 2100, according to the report from the U.S. Geological Survey. That's a bummer for Rincon and Malibu but I'm selfish and only concerned with my immediate vicinity. What does that mean for the OC and SD? Obvious trouble spots would be the low lying areas of:

-Seal Beach
-Bolsa Chica wetlands
-All of Huntington Beach
-All of Newport Beach
-Doheny (no loss really)
-All of Trestles
-All of Oceanside
-Ponto and the lagoon at La Costa (the resort will finally be oceanfront)
-Cardiff and the lagoon
-Del Mar and the lagoon/racetrack (where the surf meets the turf- now I get it)
-Torrey Pines, the lagoon, and 5/805 merge (if you think traffic is bad now...)
-La Jolla Shores (no loss really)
-All of PB/MB/OB (no loss really) and Mission Bay
-San Diego Bay and the airport (will make for tricky landings I guess)
-Coronado
-Imperial Beach

“Beaches are perhaps the most iconic feature of California, and the potential for losing this identity is real,” Sean Vitousek, lead author and post-doctoral fellow at the USGS when he conducted the study, said in a press statement.

Replenishment programs that dredge up sand from the ocean and dump it along shorelines have led to a majority of Southern California beaches actually growing in recent years. According to the modeling, those costly efforts, at their current pace, won’t be able to keep up with the rising tides and more powerful weather events of coming decades.

Buffering against these impacts with beach-nourishment programs and sea walls will likely be very expensive, but so would doing little to stop the erosion. The loss of key shorelines could result in billions of dollars lost to local tourism industries, and without the natural buffer of beaches, storms could pummel seaside homes and other structures, as well as threaten lives.

“The effect of California losing its beaches is not just a matter of affecting the tourism economy,” said Vitousek, who is now a professor in the Department of Civil & Materials Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Losing the protecting swath of beach sand between us and the pounding surf exposes critical infrastructure, businesses and homes to damage.”

The findings are the result of a new computer modeling program called the Coastal Storm Modeling System. The numerical modeling incorporates predicted sea-level rise as well as anticipated shifts in storm patterns as a result of climate change.

Predicting shorelines conditions decades out is notoriously tricky. However, scientists with USGS have held up this new program because of how accurately it was able to reproduce historical changes between 1995 and 2010.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Insert your own one word caption for the Pic of the Week. My choice is 'nasty'.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
Unflappable
Brokering The McGregor/Mayweather Deal
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