THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Our drought may be over.

SURF:

And I’m not talking about Carlsbad’s desalination plant either. I’m talking about our crummy surf! Been pretty dismal around here but it looks like things are starting to shape up.

 

We need to get through a few more small days though. First up is some background waist high sets from the NW/SW on Friday that will increase slightly towards Sunday for chest high sets. Nothing too exciting yet but patience is a virtue.

 

Water temps are high 60’s and tides this weekend are pretty mellow: 3’ at sunrise, down to 2’ at lunch, and up to 4’ at sunset.

FORECAST:

 

Ok- here’s the good news. Finally. A couple weak storms up N will send chest high NW swell to us Monday and Tuesday.

 

THEN… a solid late season storm off Antarctica today will send us head high sets from the SW next Thursday/Friday. Yes! Something to talk about!

After that, more storms are forecasted in the northern and southern hemispheres but nothing concrete yet. Bottom line, we should be due for some surf in the month of October. Just as the East Coast starts to fizzle. Hmmm… kind of odd if you ask me. Anyway, if anything changes between now and then, keep up to date on the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

 

If it’s not hot like summer and it’s not cold like winter, then it must be fall. Weak cold fronts pass by to the north and will kick up the low clouds and fog for the foreseeable future. Look for clouds to burn off by mid-morning, sun mid-day, and low clouds to return at night. Temps will be near 70 at the coast and we have a chance of dense fog. Makes those dawn patrols more challenging.

BEST BET:

Next Thursday with solid SW swell. I can finally breathe again.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

 

Sharks as you know, have been quite the talk of the town this past year- especially in Orange County. Multiple attacks and sightings from San Onofre to Huntington Beach have made people second guess paddling out by themselves- no matter how good the surf is. One surfer and a team of scientists have tried to remedy the situation with a new warning system. The surfer in question is none other than Bronzed Aussie, world tour pioneer, and Wavestorm executive (you can’t make that stuff up) Ian ‘Kanga’ Cairns. I’ll let the LA Times explain:

A stretch of water off Corona del Mar State Beach will be used to test sonar buoys that could help quickly alert lifeguards to sharks lurking near the coast, officials announced last week. In a news conference at Inspiration Point, Newport Beach Mayor Kevin Muldoon, U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) and others discussed installing six of the special buoys by Memorial Day in a roughly 1,000-yard stretch of water between the offshore rocks near Poppy and Ocean avenues and the jetty at the mouth of Newport Harbor.

The devices, designed by Australia-based Shark Mitigation Systems, are called Clever Buoys. Ian Cairns, a representative of SMS, said the buoys also use sonar transducers, which will be on the ocean floor. A transducer is an electronic device that converts energy from one form to another. Together, the buoys and transducers can find nearby marine animals and, based on the swimming patterns, detect whether an animal is a shark or dolphin. Cairns said the buoys will notify lifeguards seconds after a sighting, giving them ample time to investigate.

 

Rob Williams, Newport Beach’s chief lifeguard, said his teams can use boats or drones to respond to the alerts and, depending on the size or behavior of a shark, quickly issue warnings or beach closures. “We’re very excited about it as a city and a lifeguard division,” Williams said. Final funding for the buoys is still being secured, as are various permits. Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Committee on Science and Technology, said he will be looking for federal funding to help. He said city, county, state or private money also could go into the effort.

Rohrabacher added that the buoy alerts to lifeguards could one day also be available to the public on a phone app. Rohrabacher called sharks off the Southern California coast an “expanding threat” that he’s experienced while surfing. He joked that he has both local experience with the predators and “the sharks back in Washington.”

Officials noted that Corona del Mar State Beach, known as Big Corona, was the spot where swimmer Maria Korcsmaros was bitten last year by a shark, possibly a great white, about 150 yards offshore. She survived the attack. Later that year, Newport Beach became the first city in Orange County to have a dedicated shark page on its website. The city also installed acoustic receivers at the Newport Pier, Balboa Pier and off Corona del Mar to gather information for the site.

Pretty crazy to think that in the future that if you want to go surfing, you may have to check the swell buoys, tides, weather, and now a shark app. I don’t know if I can keep track of all that.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

 

 

When A-Frames go bad. Imagine trying to duck dive this thing?
 

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Worth My Weight In Gold
Jimmy Crack Corn And I Don’t Care
2020 USA Olympic Surf Team: Slater, Florence, Moore, Glenn

THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Everyone remain calm.

SURF:

While the East Coast has been getting record surf from record hurricanes, us lil’ ol’ West Coasters have been getting skunked. Sure we’ve had little S swells that have given the OC chest high waves off and on the past month, but it’s been few and far between down here. Throw in some cool water temps and showers (gasp!) and you’d think it was fall! Well I guess it is fall, but that’s beside the point. It’s been pretty small with unappealing conditions and it won’t get much better this weekend.

 

 

On tap for tomorrow is a NW windswell/groundswell that is peaking tonight (just our luck) from the cold front that blew through today. Look for chest high surf in the AM. Then it drops during the day as the W winds pick up too for breezy conditions. By Saturday, we’re back to waist to chest high waves and Sunday we have leftover waist high NW. So if you want something rideable this weekend, get on it asap! High pressure should set up by Sunday though and we may have great beach weather- just no real surf.

 

 

Water temps as mentioned above are hovering in the mid to high 60’s and tides this weekend are 2’ at sunrise, up to 5’ just before noon, and down to 2 at sunset. And if you haven’t noticed lately, sunrise and sunset are around 7 AM/PM each day. Easy to remember, huh?

FORECAST:

 

After the peaking NW on Friday, we’ve got… not much to report. Again- no major storms in the Pacific have been aimed our way the past few days so no real surf next week. Just look for background S/NW for waist high sets. But the weather should be nice. At least we have that going for us. And in the long term- nothing else to report through at least next weekend. Best case is a hurricane to form or a storm in the Aleutians to form so we can get surf in early October! If anything changes between now and then, keep up to date on the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.

WEATHER:

 

Perfect timing for the showers today- the first full day of fall. The low pressure that dropped a few hundredths of an inch in southern California will hang around through Saturday morning, then high pressure starts to fill in Sunday. Most of next week should have mild Santa Ana conditions for light offshores in the AM with temps at the beaches in the high 70’s. Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had some surf to go along with that sunshine?! Do I sound bitter? I’m not.  

BEST BET:

Friday morning while we still have leftover NW and the winds haven't picked up yet!

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

 

What happened to our El Nino of years past with all the great weather, warm water, and surf we should be expecting this time of year?! Seems like it’s been flat forever, cooler than average (definitely for an Indian Summer), and the East Coast has been getting all the surf- which is odd since it should be flat during an El Nino over there.

Well… the equatorial Pacific has been cooler than average (just east of Hawaii) and the signs are now pointing to NOT an El Nino but rather… the dreaded La Nina this fall/winter. Here’s the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration to explain:

The September El Nino/La Nina forecast is out and forecasters think there is an approximate 55-60% chance of La Niña this fall and winter. We are officially on a La Niña Watch. Here’s the latest developments:

Summer Summary

 

First, though, a quick recap of current conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean. The sea surface temperature in our favorite Niño3.4 region in the central Pacific was about 0.1°C colder than the long-term average over June – August, smack-dab in the neutral range. The atmosphere also reflected neutral conditions during the summer, with the winds above the equatorial Pacific neither particularly enhanced nor weakened, and an average pattern in the clouds and rainfall.

While neutral prevailed during meteorological summer (what we call June – August, while the summer solstice through the vernal equinox is “astronomical summer”), we began to see some indications over the course of August that a change may be afoot. The first of these is the downward trend in central Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies (departure from the long-term mean) from July into August, with the August average in the Nino3.4 region of about -0.4°C.

Winds and Waves

One of the many environmental factors that we monitor closely is the temperature of the tropical Pacific below the surface of the ocean. Over the course of a couple of months, areas of cooler or warmer water can grow or move below the surface of the Pacific from west to east along the equator. These blobs (often in the form of oceanic Kelvin waves) often rise to the surface as they approach the eastern Pacific Ocean, and so give us a heads-up of how the surface may look in the near future. It just so happens that during August, an area of cooler-than-average water developed around 50-150 meters below the surface of the Pacific.

 

Subsurface Kelvin waves are triggered by changes in the wind at the surface. The trade winds normally blow from east to west across the surface of the equatorial Pacific, keeping warmer surface water trapped in the western Pacific Ocean. If the winds weaken or strengthen, they can sometimes—but not always; this is a complex system—kick off Kelvin waves. In the case of an upwelling Kelvin wave, such as what we saw over the last month, the winds across the equatorial Pacific have strengthened, pushing harder on the surface waters and allowing cooler water to upwell from the deep ocean.

Since fall of 2016, the overall wind pattern has tended toward slightly stronger-than-average trade winds in the central and western Pacific, with a brief interruption in April 2017. This pattern is a little La Niña-ish, despite a lack of cool sea surface waters, and it’s one of the reasons we didn’t have a lot of confidence this past spring in the climate model forecasts for El Niño.

During the second half of July, the trade winds puffed a bit harder over the western half of the Pacific, likely helping this current Kelvin wave form. The complexity of the ocean-atmosphere system, where changes in one feed back into the other, means it’s difficult to diagnose a “cause” of the strengthened trade winds.

Model Citizen

 

The other major factor playing into forecasters’ consensus that conditions are favorable for the development of El Niño or La Niña conditions within the next six months (the criteria for a La Niña Watch) are the forecasts from the dynamical computer models.

 

The ensemble of models from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) is predicting that La Niña will develop this fall, and last just through the winter. Back-to-back La Niña winters are not uncommon, and have occurred at least five times since 1950, most recently in 2010-2011 and 2011-2012.

We are giving credence to the model forecasts because there is supporting physical evidence (that subsurface cooler water I was going on about a few paragraphs ago) and because September forecasts of Niño3.4 sea surface temperature have historically been fairly accurate.

After analyzing 36 years of predictions from the NMME, we found that September forecasts for November Niño3.4 sea surface temperatures have a strong relationship with what actually happened (0.96 correlation value, where 1.0 means they follow exactly). So, while they’re not perfect- they’re usually reliable.

Watch On

In short, forecasters think that the sea surface in the Niño3.4 region will continue to cool, and the atmosphere will respond with a strengthened Walker circulation—the characteristics of La Niña. While chances of La Niña do have the edge in the current forecast, the odds only top out at about 60% likelihood that La Niña conditions will prevail in the winter. Climate forecasters will take this into consideration when developing the forecast for this coming winter, which will be released in October.

Long story short, if La Nina does form this fall/winter, it looks to be weak. So the forecast might be slightly less rain, slightly cooler than average water temps, and less/smaller surf. Makes you want to move to Lemoore, doesn’t it?

PIC OF THE WEEK:

 

Since we haven’t seen good surf since, well, since the Chargers were in San Diego, I thought I’d give you a little reminder.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Magnificent

Voted Best DJ In Vegas

Lassoed A Bull Shark At Kelly’s Surf Ranch. Yeehaw!

THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Anyone else worried?

SURF:

Not to sound the alarm or anything, but the surf has been really mediocre lately. But you already knew that.

 

Just some small surf this week for waist high+ waves (and better towards the OC- buy you already knew that since you were watching the Trestles contest at your office when you should have been working). Our heat wave has also left the building (thankfully) and we’re in full autumn mode with WNW wind, cool days, and water temps in the low to mid-60’s. For this weekend, fall keeps on rolling with chest high sets from the S and NW on Saturday. Sunday doesn’t look promising as the NW backs off and the S is only waist high plus. Air temps may rebound slightly for the weekend but next week looks cool again (more on that below in the WEATHER section). So until then, get some fun little waves on Saturday and make sure to wear a wetsuit!

 

On a side note, there’s a couple tropical storms off Mexico today (Max and Norma) but Max has slammed into mainland Mexico this evening and Norma is forecasted to slam into Cabo this weekend. So no surf for us.

 

 

As far as the tides go, we have a 4’ high tide at sunrise, down to 2’ mid-day, and up to 5.5’ at sunset.

FORECAST:

As mentioned above, fall has started early with cool air temps, even colder water, and NW swells on the horizon.

First up is a little bump from the NW on Tuesday afternoon for chest high sets and then a reinforcement on Wednesday with shoulder high sets and maybe a head high set in SD? Hopefully? Surf backs off slightly on Thursday then another small chest high NW fills in next Friday. Still nothing big but least it’s something. And if anything changes between now and then, make sure to keep up to date at Twitter/North County Surf.

WEATHER:

 

If you’ve driven by Swami’s lately, then I’m sure you’ve seen the pumpkins growing up on the hill. So fall must be ‘unofficially’ here. Or if you saw the clouds blow through yesterday and felt the chill in the air, then you really know fall is ‘unofficially’ here. OR… if you saw the Chargers lose last weekend then you REALLY know fall must be ‘unofficially’ here. For the weekend, the weather tomorrow will be cooler than usual with temps in the low 70’s and rebounds slightly Saturday/Sunday to the mid-70’s. Then another low pressure system sets up shop next week for cool conditions, clouds, and temps back to 70. Might have to clean out the ol’ fireplace soon.

 

BEST BET:

Little combo swell on Saturday or a fun NW on Wednesday.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

 

If you’ve read THE Surf Report over the years, you might have noticed I’ve reported on the theory that as the earth warms, our weather will become more extreme- either bigger storms or bigger droughts. If you take California for example, we’ve had one of our worst droughts ever and on the flipside, some of our biggest snowfalls. Sure would be nice if we could even that out somehow. And as I’ve said before, regardless of your political beliefs, the earth is warmer than normal due to natural or man-made causes. So without further adieu, the New York Times recently reported on this extreme weather phenomenon. Here’s what they had to say:

Warm air can carry more water than cool air. You may understand this fact intuitively even if you don’t realize it. The greater moisture of warm air explains why your skin doesn’t get as dry in the summer and why the forests of the sweltering Amazon get a lot more precipitation than northern Canada’s forests.

About 40 years ago, the earth’s surface temperatures began to break out of their recent historical range and just kept climbing. Not coincidentally, the number of storms with extreme rainfall began to increase around the same time.

Extreme rainstorms are up more than a third since the early 1980s, according to research by Kenneth Kunkel of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies.

Kunkel’s threshold for an “extreme” rainstorm varies by region, depending on how much rain a place typically receives. It’s a count of storms that would ordinarily occur only once every several years — the sort of storms that stretch a community’s capacity to cope.

The main reason these storms seem to be more frequent is the warmer earth. Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton researcher, compares warmer air to a bigger bucket: It can carry more water from oceans and then dump that water on land.

Regular readers know that I think it’s a mistake to shy away from talking about the connection between climate change and weather. Yes, the connection can be complicated. Even as most places get more rain, for example, some dry places have suffered more droughts.

Yet human beings should be able to deal with complexity. There is overwhelming evidence that a warmer earth is altering the weather. Irma and Harvey weren’t caused by climate change, but they almost certainly would not have been so powerful if the air and the seas fueling them hadn’t been so warm.

And the rise of extreme rainstorms isn’t limited to hurricanes. “Heavy precipitation events in most parts of the United States have increased,” says the latest draft of the National Climate Assessment, written by scientists who are careful not to over-claim. “There is strong evidence,” it continues, “that increased water vapor resulting from higher temperatures is the primary cause.”

Think of this as a warning. The weather around us is changing. The changes are already doing damage, and they will accelerate as the planet warms.

Just look at Florida. Irma, thank goodness, made a late turn and caused less damage than feared. Yet Florida faces problems much bigger than any one storm. The increased rain is falling into seas swollen by melted ice caps. Florida is also the country’s flattest state, barely above sea level. As a result, floods and severe “king tides” have become more common.

The city of Hallandale Beach has closed drinking wells, inundated by saltwater, as Elizabeth Kolbert has reported. In 2013, Miami Beach elected a mayor who promised to deal with floods; he ran a campaign ad that showed him getting ready to commute by kayak. In nearby Coral Gables, as Bloomberg’s Christopher Flavelle recently wrote, the mayor worries about boats ramming into the bridges because of rising canals.

Welcome to the era of extreme rain. We need to be preparing for a future that’s guaranteed to be hotter and rainier.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

 

If you had a choice, would you want one of those mansions or all those overhead waves to yourself? If you’re a real surfer, I already know the answer to that question.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Trust Fund Kid
Just Got My iPhone 9
Jack Invented the Wetsuit BUT I Invented Neoprene

THE Surf Report- Early Edition

This is nice.

SURF:
Last weekend, not so much. Hot weather and windy conditions (compliments of Tropical Storm Lidia) messed up a good swell and brought sweltering heat (more on that below in WEATHER).

Luckily for us, the weather is finally manageable and we've had leftover S in the water along with new small NW swell for chest high surf. For tomorrow and Saturday, both swells drop slightly for waist high+ waves. On Sunday afternoon, new small NW fills in again for chest high sets. All in all, little but rideable waves this weekend.

Tides the next few days are 1' at sunrise, up to 5.5' before lunch, and down to 1' again at sunset. And our water is a pleasant 72 degrees.

FORECAST:
Still no major storms on the horizon but the Pacific won't be totally flat.

First up is the NW mentioned above on Sunday that will continue to give us chest high sets on Monday.

After that we get a little pulse from the SE (just outside our swell window) for waist high waves in north SD and chest high in the OC on Wednesday.

And after that, models show storms in the Aleutians, Baja, and Antarctica trying to take shape but nothing concrete yet. Make sure to keep up to date on the waves & weather at Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

In one of the most bizarre weather phenomenons I've ever felt, Tropical Storm Lidia decided to mess with us in the middle of the night on Saturday. As we went to bed, the temp was 78 at the coast and dropping from a mild sea breeze. Lidia snuck in around mid-night though and as she did- her circulation turned offshore- a Santa Ana 'easterly' wind if you will. So temps around 4 AM on Sunday- usually the coolest time of the day- dramatically rose to 90 degrees. If WalMart was open, I would have ran to buy a fan in my PJ's. But alas it was 4 AM of course and it felt like sleeping in a tent during a Palm Springs summer. Lidia has since moved on but tropical moisture has lingered all week. That will be the case again through the weekend. Models show a weak cut off low moving in from the N on Sunday- which normally wouldn't be all that exciting- but throw in some tropical moisture- and we could see a stray shower/thunderstorm at the coast. For early next week, we have a couple more days of tropical clouds over the mountains, then we should dry out the 2nd half of next week.

BEST BET:
Either small NW on Sunday or a little shot of SE surf on Wednesday. Yawn.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Today's News of the Week is a quick history of the Newport Beach harbor entrance. Now before you click off this email, it’s an amazing story as one of the world’s best waves from the early 1900’s (Corona del Mar) died and rose from the ashes as one of the most feared waves on the planet today (i.e. the Wedge). Here's a little history lesson:

Pre-1800’s: The original mouth of the Santa Ana River was located at the Newport Harbor entrance in Newport Beach, CA (splitting present day Big Corona Beach in Corona Del Mar and the Wedge in Newport Beach). Up until the the late 1800’s, Newport Bay was predominantly a river estuary with few open channels. The river flowed into the bay bringing with it heavy silt and making boating difficult. To eventually create Newport Harbor, sand deposited by the Santa Ana River had to be constantly dredged away.

Early-1900’s – Old-timers (no jokes about me please) said the sandbar at the rivermouth would break consistently over 20’ due to waves coming out of deepwater and hitting the shallow sandbars. It was called the best wave in California due to it’s consistency and long rides (take that Rincon)! George Freeth and Tom Blake, early pioneers of surfing (who rode 100 pound balsa boards), made the wave a famous surf spot.

1916 - Small (almost useless) jetty on the Wedge side of the harbor entrance begun by the Army Corps of Engineers to help boats navigate the treacherous sand bar formed by the Santa Ana River.

1920-22 - The Bitter Point Dam was built to divert the river away from the Newport Bay and on its current course to the ocean at the border of Huntington/Newport Beach (i.e. the Santa Ana River Jetties). All of the islands in Newport Harbor are the product of dredging and man-made forming from the sands and silt deposited over time by the Santa Ana River.

1925 - Due to it’s status as one of the best waves on the coast, a frequent visitor by the name of Duke Kahanamoku would surf the sandbar along with friend George Freeth. Duke, the godfather of modern-day surfing (as well as an Olympic gold medalist in swimming), actually saved eight lives in 1925 after rough surf capsized a boat at the harbor entrance.

1926 - George Rogers, lost his oldest son George Rogers Jr., in another boating accident at the harbor entrance due to large surf. He’d then dedicate his life to extend rock wall jetties out toward the ocean, to block big surf from capsizing boats coming in and out of the Newport Harbor.

1927 – George Rogers dies from a heart attack on his boat, just outside the harbor ironically. Construction of a small concrete ‘jetty’ was constructed on the Corona Del Mar side of the harbor entrance.

1934 – Construction of permanent large jetties on both the Corona Del Mar and Newport Beach side of the harbor entrance was started by the Army Corps of Engineers.

1936 – The large jetties were finished, effectively killing the sandbar at the harbor entrance (the unofficial death of the Corona del Mar) but giving birth to ‘The Hook' on the other side of the harbor entrance. The Hook was a wave that unknowingly was formed by the Army Corps of Engineers when the 1st wave of a set would bounce off the newly formed Newport Beach jetty and morphed into the 2nd incoming set wave, forming a bigger meaner wave then just the 1st or 2nd wave alone.

1960s – ‘The Hook’ didn’t sound ominous enough (or descriptive enough) so it was changed by locals to: ‘The Wedge’

1963 – Newport Beach City Council gets wise and finally posts danger signs at the Wedge.

1964 – Before social media, there was the film, “The Endless Summer”, which brought the Wedge to the world stage as one of the most notorious waves ever.

1993 – The lifeguard “Blackball” flag was implemented, banning hard boards (i.e. surfboards) from 10am to 5pm, May 1st to October 31st.

Present Day – The wave at the harbor entrance has come full circle- with surfers like Jamie O’Brien carrying on Duke’s tradition by flying over from Hawaii to surf the new wave.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Gotta love old world charm. Sure the electricity in town is spotty, restaurants aren’t open on Sundays, and there’s no such thing as the internet- but what more do you really need in life than this throaty right hander and no one out?

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
Gnarly
The Next Bachelor
Surf Forecaster To The Stars