All or nuthin'
SURF:
Lackluster week for surf. Partly cloudy, some windy days, and pretty much flat. At least the water was warm. Welcome to the East Coast!
Fate is on our side though as a solid storm off New Zealand flared up last week and good SW swell is marching towards us as we speak. The buoys should start picking up some 22 second readings tomorrow but we won't see much until Saturday evening- look for some chest high sets by sundown. On Sunday it picks up a notch with sets in the shoulder high range by the afternoon. Basically Saturday is small but fun and Sunday should have waves.
Water temps are hovering in the low to mid 70's and tides the next few days are 3.5' at sunrise, down slightly to 2.5' before lunch, and up to 5.5' at dinner.
FORECAST:
Monday the SW continues to build for head high surf and on Tuesday the swell peaks with overhead sets. And as luck would have it, we've got a heat wave building too with temps in the mid-80's. Glad I'm not a lifeguard. Wednesday the swell starts to back off with shoulder high surf and late in the week it's pretty small.
Further out, the southern hemisphere is taking a nap unfortunately and there's no SW forecasted between the 26th to the 31st.
Charts though show another storm off Antarctica around the 26th which may give us SSW swell around the 1st of August.
Models also show a hurricane developing around the 28th with more S swell around the 1st. That's IF the models hold true. So until then, get it while you can.
WEATHER:
Typical July weather lately. Some low clouds in the AM, tropical clouds mid-day, and a little bit of wind in the afternoons. That will start to change this weekend as we'll be in transition from monsoon moisture and high pressure. By Monday, sunnier skies will start to prevail and the temps will be in the high 70's. The builds all week and models show the heat peaking around Thursday with beach temps in the mid-80's (and the nights 70- wow. Not as bad as Death Valley though with a high of 125 and a low of 95. Wow X 2). Hopefully things start to cool off by next weekend. Make sure to keep up to date on the latest conditions at Twitter/North County Surf.
BEST BET:
Tuesday with overhead SW swell, beach temps in the mid-80's, and water temps in the mid-70's. I must have been a good boy lately.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Drones are all the rage. Our military uses them for surveillance, you see them flying over Teahupoo to get footage you never thought possible, heck- even the Olympics used them for some sort of fireworks type synchronized dancing display in the sky. But that's fine and dandy for the sky. What if you need to go under water? And more importantly, go underwater during a hurricane to record and report back data? Well, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will soon launch a fleet of 15 unmanned drones called 'gliders' in the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean this hurricane season to collect important oceanic data that could prove useful to forecasters. I'll let NOAA take it from here:
“If you want to improve prediction of how hurricanes gain strength or weaken as they travel over the ocean, it's critical to take the ocean’s temperature and measure how salty it is,” said Gustavo Goni, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory who is helping lead the glider research. “Not just at the surface, which we measure with satellites, but down into deeper layers of ocean waters.”
NOAA, the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System and university partners will begin deploying the torpedo-shaped, remotely-operated, battery-powered gliders from vessels off Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in mid-July. Ten of the gliders will come from the U.S. Navy, and the others from NOAA.
The gliders will collect the ocean data as they dive down from the surface to a half mile of depth and then regularly resurface several times a day, even during hurricane conditions, to transmit information by satellite to the Global Telecommunications Center used by NOAA’s National Weather Service.
The data will be available to the public through the U.S. IOOS Glider Data Assembly Centeroffsite link later this summer.
But why does salinity and temperature matter? Glider data, as well as data from other ocean observing systems showing lower concentrations of salt in surface seawater, can be a clue that this lighter water may form a warm cap that prevents cool water from welling up to the surface. This warm cap can then fuel a hurricane’s strength.
Glider data also helps scientists better predict if the cooler water lying just below the warm surface waters is likely to rise and mix with the surface waters and weaken hurricane strength.
An analysis by NOAA and university scientists found gliders provided key ocean information to a NOAA experimental forecast model in 2014 that allowed scientists to significantly improve wind intensity predictions for Category-4 Hurricane Gonzalo.
Since 2014, NOAA has launched two to four gliders each hurricane season in this same region. The Navy collaboration will more than triple the number of gliders, which greatly increases the odds that gliders will be close enough to more tropical storms to provide key data for weather forecasts.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
"In this crowded world, the surfer can still seek and find the perfect day, the perfect wave, and be alone with the surf and his thoughts." -Sebastian Bach.
My bad, it was Johann Sebastian Bach who said that. Or was it John Stevenson Plumbing? No wait- John Severson! John Severson, Surfer Magazine, 1960. Nailed it! Fore more lonely waves, check out Stu Gibson's work here.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Peacemaker
Internet Sensation
The Lesser Known Michael "Jughead" Glenn to Matt "Archy" Archbold
