Hope you own a big umbrella.
SURF:
Wanted to get ahead of myself with the storm that's coming tonight, so here's an early early edition of THE Surf Report.
Let's start with the surf though. Had some NW early in the week that was replaced with small and clean early season SW yesterday. Today we had leftover waist high SW (better in the OC) and increasing S winds from the impending storm headed our way.
For tomorrow through Friday, look for stormy conditions: strong SW winds, heaps of rain, and overhead bumpy NW surf. Saturday cleans up in the skies above but the water will be DIRTY from the strong storm.
Models show another couple weak fronts coming through on Saturday/Sunday which will increase our surf from the NW for overhead surf- along with our winds and showers. Long story short- a jumbled weekend. Water temps are still a chilly 58 degrees and tides this weekend are 6' at sunrise, down to -1.2' at lunch, and back up to 3' at sunset.
FORECAST:
After a mess of a weekend, the surf backs off fairly quickly. Monday should be clean with chest to shoulder high sets in the AM, and by Tuesday it's pretty small.
Charts show a storm coming off Japan today that may give us a long period inconsistent chest high+ WNW late next week.
Charts also show a small disturbance off Antarctica/Chile that could give us waist high SW around the same time too. Long story short- small early next week and not much better by next weekend. Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather Twitter/North County Surf.
WEATHER:
Call you what you want- atmospheric river, pineapple express, El Nino fueled storm, whatever- we're going to get a TON of rain tomorrow. My usual rating systems for rain is as follows:
· 1/4" or less is nothing to get excited about and the ground absorbs most of it
· 1/2" is a good round of showers and makes a dent in our drought
· 1" is a solid storm that I look forward to each winter
· 2" happens every few years and makes a minor mess of things
· 3" is a solid El Nino type storm and makes a mess of everything. Guess what we may get tomorrow…
Forecast models show a plume of warm moist air/clouds stretching from Hawaii to California and it's getting drawn into a large low pressure system off the Pacific NW today. As the two weather features combine, they'll 2-3" of rain at the coast, up to 4" inland, and maybe 10" in the mountains. Unfortunately, since the plume is tropical in nature, the storm will be warm with snow levels starting above 8000'. That means a lot of the snow we received locally at our lower levels will melt quickly and increase the chance of flooding in the foothills. And for you Mammoth/Tahoe people out there, yes, they're getting 4-6' of snow today at most resorts and strong hurricane force winds. After the rain moves through the next few days, we should have clear cool skies to start the work week and maybe some more weak showers the 2nd half of next week. Man has it been a busy winter.
BEST BET:
Do you like big and lumpy or smaller and smoother? If big and lumpy- Sunday. If smaller and smoother- next Thursday.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Pop quiz! Tell me the 5 hottest years on record for the planet Earth. If you said 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, you win! (Not sure what you’ve won, but I’ll dig something up). Our friends at National Geographic reported this week that the last five years were the hottest ever recorded. The planet is warming up, and there’s no sign of stopping. All aboard the heat train!
According to new reports published Wednesday, the last five years—from 2014 to 2018—are the warmest years ever recorded in the 139 years that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has tracked global heat. And 2018 was the fourth hottest year ever recorded.
Global air temperatures have warmed steadily over past decades, shifting up and down slightly from year to year depending on natural climate oscillations like El Niño, but following a consistent upward path. Land temperatures, they said, were more than two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average. “It’s a long-term trip up the elevator of warming,” says Deke Arndt, the chief of the global monitoring branch of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in North Carolina.
A warming climate doesn’t simply heat up summers and keep winters from getting as cold as they used to: It can also disrupt weather patterns, making storms stronger and rain events more intense. It can change when and where snow falls or lakes freeze. And it may reprogram the very ways that oceans circulate. "2018 was an exclamation point on a trend toward more big rain," says Arndt.
But the ever-increasing heat is also a challenge for humans and living creatures around the world. Heat waves from Europe to Australia roiled the planet this past year, breaking temperature records and fueling devastating wildfires. The European heat waves, scientists discovered, were about five times more likely because of human-induced climate change. The wildfires that wracked the western U.S. were also intensified by climate change, scientists have determined, as heat and drought sucked water out of vegetation, leaving it dry and flammable as kindling.
Rising temperatures also contributed to a growing inventory of weather-related disasters. In 2018, NOAA says, there were 14 weather and climate events that cost the country hundreds of lives and $1 billion dollars or more, for a total of at least 247 deaths and $91 billion in damages. Hurricanes Florence and Michael, which devastated the communities through which they ripped, were the most destructive, with western wildfires following closely behind.
The forecast for coming years points to more of the same. The U.K.’s Met Office predicts that 2019 will likely be even warmer than 2018, at least in part driven by a developing El Niño event, which nearly always bump global temperatures up. But scientists stress that greenhouse gas emissions are the primary factor pushing temperatures higher both in past decades and into the future.
So there you have it. No matter what side of the political fence you’re on, you have to agree, it’s time to upgrade that air conditioner.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Long wave with a long walk across the reef. Worth every nick, cut, and scrape I'd say.
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
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