Good as it gets?
SURF:
Our last week of surf may have been as good as it gets around here. Before you scoff and call me an ol’ timer, tell me when (in recent memory- don’t tell me how big ’69 was, or about the epic El Nino of ‘82/’83, or how you charged the Wedge during Hurricane Marie in ‘14) in which we had solid SW swell, a good NW windswell to cross it up, sunny skies, manageable winds, water temps hovering around 70, AND the tourists from Arizona hadn’t clogged the line up yet. Hard to recall, huh? Today the SW/NW swells are all but gone but we still had a couple chest high waves in far north SD and the OC. For tomorrow and Saturday, it’s looking small with just waist high SW/NW but at least the water will be nice.
FORECAST:
The SW swell mentioned above will fill in more on Monday for shoulder high sets towards the OC and peak Tuesday morning.
WEATHER:
We’ve had pretty good weather this spring as May Gray/June Gloom haven’t been a problem (more on that below in the NEWS OF THE WEEK). Sure we’ve had night/morning low clouds/fog- but most days they’ve cleared out by noon and we’ve had great beach weather. We’ve got a low pressure off our coast for the weekend which will make our low clouds/fog linger a little longer down here, but we should see at least a little sun at the beaches by late afternoon. Not ideal- but at least it won’t be socked in with drizzle. This low pressure is also pulling remnant tropical moisture from former hurricanes Aletta and Bud- so if you’re headed to the desert this weekend- you may see a stray weak thunderstorm. Next week high pressure returns for more sun and slightly warmer temperatures. Make sure to keep up to date on the latest conditions at Twitter/North County Surf.
BEST BET:
Fun combo swell late Monday into Tuesday, nice weather, and water temps near 70!
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
If you’ve read THE Surf Report over the years, you know I’m not a big fan of fog. How many times have you been driving around town, it’s hot as heck, and you think to yourself “What a great day- I’m going to run down the beach for a quick surf”… only to pull up and see the coast is socked in with fog, it’s cold, and drizzly. Not cool. I like it either sunny or stormy- nothing in between. Well, careful what you wish for. The ‘dreaded’ May Gray and June Gloom seem to be disappearing according to multiple reports lately. Here’s what they had to say:
It’s not just climate change that’s intensifying warming in Southern California. As our cities become more populous and denser with buildings, vehicles, and roads, they capture and reflect more of the sun’s heat, and that heat is increasingly dissipating the morning fog and low clouds that shade coastal Southern California in the summer. A scientific study released last week revealed that clouds in coastal areas have “declined significantly” since the 1970s in the most urbanized areas.
“Cloud cover is plummeting in southern coastal California,” said Park Williams, a climatologist and former graduate student and researcher at UC Santa Barbara. “And as the clouds decrease, that increases the chances of bigger and more intense fires.”
Eric Boldt, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service station in Oxnard, said that the findings made a lot of sense, based on his years of experience observing weather in Southern California. “I fully think this is accurate,” he said. “If you heat up the land, you’re going to burn off clouds sooner in the morning.”
Boldt said it was plausible that population growth and development of Southern California since the 1970s led to an intensification of what scientists call the “heat island effect.” “I looked up some numbers on population growth in Southern California,” he said. “Los Angeles County went from about 7 million people in 1970, to about 10 million today. With all those people coming in, and a lot of them moving out towards the ocean, you’re going to have more houses and buildings and freeways reflecting heat.”
The study, which was published last week in the Geophysical Research Letters journal, found that with less cloud cover in summer, plants lost a higher percentage of their moisture to the atmosphere, making them more likely to burn if exposed to fire. Williams stressed that summer cloud cover is a less important factor for fires than Santa Ana winds or the timing of rains in the fall and winter, but he said that about 40 percent of wildfires in the region occur from May through September.
As an example of such a summer fire, Boldt pointed to the Springs Fire in the Camarillo area, which in 2013 burned over 25,000 acres in a little more than a day. “Usually in May we have low clouds and sometimes a little drizzle, but in that case we had a Santa Ana [wind] condition, and a major wildfire that burned all the way from Highway 101 to the ocean,” he said.
Williams and a team of researchers, using cloud measurements taken every fifteen minutes from airports throughout Southern California, found statistically significant decreases in cloud cover at 21 out of 22 airports, with overall decreases of 56 percent in cloud frequency in Burbank and 46 percent at the Santa Monica Airport.
The impact of the heat island effect has not been as marked in Santa Barbara as in Los Angeles and San Diego, Williams said. “Santa Barbara hasn’t been urbanized enough to have as great an impact,” he said. “There is a slight decrease in cloud formation, but the urban heat island effect hasn’t been strong enough to overcome the forces of natural climate variability. By contrast in Los Angeles, somebody going about their lives could have noticed in recent years clouds burning off earlier in the day, such that there is about one extra hour of clear sky conditions.”
So is my wish of great beach weather at the expense of increased wildfires? I sure hope not.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
So there’s been some heated rhetoric between Canada and the US lately which is a shame, because with set ups like this in the Great White North, why can’t we just all get along? Don’t want these points to go to waste…
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Phenomenal
Lover, Not A Fighter
I Guess I’m Some Kind Of Surf Star In Japan
