Anyone else
worried?
SURF:
Not to sound
the alarm or anything, but the surf has been really mediocre lately. But you
already knew that. 
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
KidJust Got My iPhone 9
Jack Invented the Wetsuit BUT I Invented Neoprene
