I can see the light at the end of the barrel or tunnel or tube or whatever you call it.
SURF:
Been an odd combo this past month of storms arriving the same time our swells do. It would be great to get the swells a day early before the rain and wind kick in. But alas, we're almost to spring and that's the way it goes around here. Have no fear though as the southern hemi is starting to come to life and our rain is now turning to showers. Before I get ahead of myself though, let's take a look at the week that was.
Had WNW last weekend in between rain squalls and the rest of the week was about the same with just small WNW and background SW. Today things cleaned up slightly with leftover chest high NW from yesterday's showers and we get an increase in NW on Friday but... more showers and W wind. Surf looks to be head high late but junky. Saturday morning we have sunny skies but NW winds from the departing cold front and dropping surf. By Sunday the surf is small again and back to the waist high and under range. In summary- bigger/bumpier surf late tomorrow and smaller/cleaner this weekend. And here's some numbers for you mathematicians:
Water temps are 58 degrees.
Tides this weekend are:
- 1' at sunrise
- 4.5' at lunch
- 0.5' at sunset
- 6:10 AM sunrise
- 5:50 PM sunset
And due to Daylight Saving Time on Sunday, daylight hours are:
- 7:10 AM sunrise
- 6:50 PM sunset
FORECAST:
As winter turns to spring, we're starting to see more (small) SW swells from Antarctica.
On Monday we have a waist high SW swell filling in with chest high sets towards North County SD and better in the OC.
Weak cold fronts move through early next week though, so look for more NW wind/groundswell with head high sets and windy bumpy conditions late Tuesday/Wednesday. There's another storm behind that one which will give us overhead NW on Wednesday/Thursday.
If there's no more rain in sight (hopefully), then the good NW on Wednesday/Thursday will be met with fun SSW swell on Thursday. Beachbreaks could be peaky!
After that, the North Pacific takes a breather and the South Pacific takes over with more chest high SSW next Sunday the 17th
...and potentially more on Tuesday the 19th (with the OC being slightly bigger). In summary, lots of swells coming the next 10 days and keep your fingers crossed the rain goes away! Make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.
WEATHER:
As the NW swells back off as we get into spring, so do the strength of our storms. Had some showers this past week and just enough SW wind to make a mess of the small swells we had. Looks to be the same in the coming days as charts show a weak cold front tonight dropping 1/4" of rain at most and winds in the 15 knot range on Friday. That blows through by Saturday and we're left with bumpy conditions early- and hopefully clean conditions by late afternoon. On Sunday models show another weak front coming through for more showers into Monday, and clearing on Tuesday. THEN... more weak showers by Wednesday into Thurday. All in all some showers off and on the next few days and no big storms to speak of. Next weekend SHOULD be sunny.
BEST BET:
Late next week with new NW/SSW and HOPEFULLY the cold fronts will take a break to give us a couple windows to surf.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Who can forget the Oscar winning 'The Meg' about a 60'+ prehistoric shark called the Megalodon that terrorized the oceans and smashed box office records. Ok, maybe not Oscar winning (or box office records) but it was about a gigantic shark that DID live millions of years ago in our oceans and was 3 times as large as any Great White today. I've written about it a couple times in THE Surf Report (check it out here and here) and the Megalodon is extinct now (I hope), replaced by the Great White. But why did the most fearsome creature to ever roam the oceans disappear and the Great White shark take over? I'll let Forbes Magazine explain:
It’s a puzzle piece that has eluded shark scientists for years: just why exactly did the ancient Otodus megalodon, the largest shark to ever swim in our planet’s oceans, disappear? While recent movies and mockumentaries have toyed with the idea that “the Meg” is still alive, it is unquestionably extinct according to marine biologists. Theories have been proposed ranging from lack of prey to mass extinction events. Extinct or not (as some conspiracists believe), the nearly 60-foot-long creature captures everyone’s attention. Especially that of Robert Boessenecker, a paleontologist at the College of Charleston in South Carolina who found an Otodus megalodon tooth in California and began searching for more evidence of this animal in the West Coast. Boessenecker and colleagues then expanded their hunt even further, broadening the horizons to learn about how such a giant shark could pull off what may be one of the best disappearing acts of the planet.
But megalodon is an ancient magician that has cast many researchers under its spell, including Catalina Pimiento of the University of Florida and Christopher Clements of the University of Zurich who in 2014 published their analysis of the ancient animal’s extinction using available records. Their team of researchers determined that megalodon could have still inhabited our oceans up to around 2.6 million years ago, which is about a half million years or so before our human relatives Homo erectus began forging a path in this planet. The previous research suggested that there was a mass-extinction event around this time caused by radiation from a nearby supernova that led not only to the death of this predator but of many other animals such as ancient seals, walruses, dolphins, and whales. “The extinction of O. megalodon was previously thought to be related to this marine mass extinction-but in reality, we now know the two are not immediately related,” explained Boessenecker.
What started out in a sandy beach in California for Boessenecker and a curiosity has led to an answer that took the internet by storm: megalodon vanished some 3.6 million years ago, which is a million years earlier than any other previous estimates. Published in the journal PeerJ, this timeline means as the megalodon fell… the animal we know today as the modern great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) rose. Could this be the culprit to what ultimately shook up our ancient marine ecosystems and spelled doom out for megalodon? Boessenecker and the team believes so.
“We propose that this short overlap (3.6-4 million years ago) was sufficient time for great white sharks to spread worldwide and outcompete O. megalodon throughout its range, driving it to extinction—rather than radiation from outer space,” said Boessenecker in a statement. “This is much more believable and robustly supported by the data,” agreed Tom Deméré, giving a comment to National Geographic. Deméré is a curator of paleontology at the San Diego Natural History Museum and who was a reviewer of Pimiento and Clement's 2014 study.
But that isn’t the only culprit in this extinction. Although the publication argues that adult great whites “would have been in the same size range and likely would have competed with juvenile Otodus megalodon,” it also points the finger at dwindling prey items (the small whales that megalodons ate) and what scientists know as range fragmentation, which is when populations of a species get split up into separate areas. The researchers claim the fossil record has been misinterpreted in previous studies, with Boessenecker commenting: “We used the same worldwide dataset as earlier researchers but thoroughly vetted every fossil occurrence, and found that most of the dates had several problems—fossils with dates too young or imprecise, fossils that have been misidentified, or old dates that have since been refined by improvements in geology.”
As the megalodon population became fragmented, the large predators had to fight for dwindling food not only against one another but the newly emerged and much smaller great white shark. Although smaller, great whites are just as fierce as any other shark and their reduced size and possible increased agility may have given them the upper hand. Both animals ate similar prey, meaning the megalodon stood no chance against the newest competitor. Carcharodon carcharias evolved around four million years ago, with some scientists estimating they ventured out of the Pacific Ocean around two million years ago. Leaving the confines of the Pacific was a step towards total world domination as they spread around the world over hundreds of thousands of years. Today, the great white shark remains a cosmopolitan shark and frequently makes the news for kills. Guess this may be another one it can add to the list.
PIC OF THE WEEK:
Anchor Point in Morocco doing it's best impression of Swami's. For other great shots of far away lands, check out Alex Postigo's.
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