You can't, you won't, and you don't stop.
SURF:
We've been on a roll lately. Again. Fun NW along with fun SW along with somewhat favorable weather resulted in rideable waves all week. Again. (Stop me if this sounds like last week's report).
Looks like things actually get better this weekend as we have a NW windswell/groundswell mix peaking today along with leftover SW. Look for shoulder high waves tomorrow and Santa Ana conditions.
FORECAST:
That new SW on Sunday will roll into Monday as the NW will be a distant memory. Look for shoulder high waves and nice conditions again.
WEATHER:
Pleasant weather this past week. Just some on again/off again clouds and mild temps. High pressure is setting up today though the weekend and we'll have great weather and a chance for offshore winds in the AM and breezy NW winds in the afternoon. Look for temps in the high 70's over the weekend and sunny skies. Next week the low clouds/fog return and temps drop to the low 70's. Typical May weather.
BEST BET:
Sunday with smaller NW windswell and building SW for head high sets.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
As a kid growing up in Southern California, I always believed that if a tsunami we’re headed our way, our offshore islands (Catalina, San Clemente, San Nicholas, and the Channel Islands) would block the ‘tidal wave’ and we’d only get a glancing blow. Made sense at the time- when we get NW swells in the winter, Catalina would block swell from getting into Newport Beach. And when we get SW swells in the summer, Santa Barbara is only a shell of it’s former self due to the Channel Islands. But what if the islands actually amplified the longwave energy of the tsunami and made it bigger? Kind of like how the waves at Seaside Reef bend at high tide and make a bigger than normal wave in the shore break. Or how the underwater canyon at Newport Point bends S swells into themselves, resulting in large A-frames. Researchers at the University of Southern California recently came to the same conclusion as they challenged the long-held belief that offshore islands protect the mainland from tsunamis- and that it turned out to be the exact opposite of what I thought as a kid...
Common wisdom -- from Southern California to the South Pacific -- for coastal residents and scientists alike has long been that offshore islands would create a buffer that blocked the power of a tsunami. In fact, computer modeling of tsunamis striking a wide variety of different offshore island geometries yielded no situation in which the mainland behind them fared better.
Instead, islands focused the energy of the tsunami, increasing flooding on the mainland by up to 70 percent.
"This is where many fishing villages are located, behind offshore islands, in the belief that they will be protected from wind waves. Even Southern California residents believe that the Channel Islands and Catalina will protect them," said Costas Synolakis of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, a member of the multinational team that conducted the research.
The research was inspired by a field survey of the impact of the 2010 tsunami on the Mentawai Islands off of Sumatra. The survey data showed that villages located in the shadow of small offshore islets suffered some of the strongest tsunami impacts, worse than villages located along open coasts.
Synolakis then teamed up with researchers Emile Contal and Nicolas Vayatis of Ecoles Normales de Cachan in Paris; and Themistoklis S. Stefanakis and Frederic Dias, who both have joint appointments at Ecoles Normales de Cachan and University College Dublin to determine whether that was a one-of-a-kind situation, or the norm.
Their study, of which Dias was the corresponding author, was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A on Nov. 5.
The team designed a computer model that took into consideration various island slopes, beach slopes, water depths, distance between the island and the beach, and wavelength of the incoming tsunami.
"Even a casual analysis of these factors would have required hundreds of thousands of computations, each of which could take up to half a day," Synolakis said. "So instead, we used machine learning."
Machine learning is a mathematical process that makes it easier to identify the maximum values of interdependent processes with multiple parameters by allowing the computer to "learn" from previous results.
The computer starts to understand how various tweaks to the parameters affect the overall outcome and finds the best answer quicker. As such, results that traditionally could have taken hundreds of thousands of models to uncover were found with 200 models.
"This work is applicable to some of our tsunami study sites in New Zealand," said Borrero, who is producing tsunami hazard maps for regions of the New Zealand coast. "The northeast coast of New Zealand has many small islands offshore, similar to those in Indonesia, and our modeling suggests that this results in areas of enhanced tsunami heights."
"Substantial public education efforts are needed to help better explain to coastal residents tsunami hazards, and whenever they need to be extra cautious and responsive with evacuations during actual emergencies," Synolakis said.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Saw that Damo went south of the border this week for a little R&R and took Jimmicane with him. Here's one of the spots he surfed. I don't think he's missing the tour one bit.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Stirring
I Really Need A Butler
The Next Great Mike (After Hynson, Difenderfer, Doyle, Tabeling, Purpus, Ho, Snips, Tron, Slambresi, Burness, & Stewart)
