THE Surf Report

Welcome to summer!

SURF:

It's about time. What seemed like an eternal winter, we're finally seeing good southern hemi swells, the sun is out, Hurricane Barbara was a blast over the 4th, and water temps are hovering around 70. Too bad it has to end this week. Just kidding-  things are looking fun again in the near future. 

First up is a new S swell filling in later today, along with small NW windswell, for chest high sets. The S fills in more tomorrow for shoulder high sets and great weather. Surf on Sunday backs off to the chest high range but still fun and plenty of sun. As mentioned above, water temps are near 70 degrees and here's more numbers to plan your sessions:

Tides this weekend are:

• 3' at breakfast
• 2' at lunch
• 6' at dinner

And there's still more than 14 hours of daylight to get a few waves in:

• 5:50 AM sunrise  
• 8:00 PM sunset  

FORECAST:
After a fun weekend of surf, things get kicked up a notch. We get another bump from the SW on Monday for more consistent chest high surf and a continuation of NW windswell. Beachbreaks should be fun. 

On Tuesday the SW/NW builds some more for shoulder high surf and that lasts into Wednesday. 

We then get a breather the 2nd half of next week before more chest high S shows up around Monday the 22nd. As far as the tropics go, it's been a pretty slow start to the season considering we're in a slight El Nino pattern. Things can change pretty quick so make sure to keep track of the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf. 

WEATHER:

Great weather on tap this weekend after the night/morning low clouds/fog burn off. Look for temps in the high 70's, plenty of sun, and your typical sea breeze. Low clouds/fog should be more extensive the middle of next week then we get more sun towards next weekend again. Pretty straightforward. And no monsoon moisture (i.e. tropical clouds) to speak of in the near term.

BEST BET:
Fun on Saturday with new S/NW then good on  Tuesday/Wednesday with a slightly better SW/NW.

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

As you may or may not know, in addition to studying meteorology in college, I also had a geology minor. Surfing of course consists of 4 parts- waves, weather, bathymetry, and the actual wave riding- so geology and what makes waves break was of interest to me. In regards to geology, one of the forces that shapes our coastlines, mountains, deserts, etc. is unfortunately earthquakes. The recent quakes in Ridgecrest, CA were significant due to their size- the largest ones being 7.1 and 6.4 over the July 4th weekend. My son and I were hiking in the area just the week before and we marveled at the forces that shaped the mountains in the Eastern Sierras. If you're unfamiliar with Ridgecrest and the surrounding mountains, it happens to be off highway 395, a short 1 hour drive from LA and 3 hours from San Diego. The area is home to Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States at 14,505'. (And if you're wondering, yes, the highest peak in the world Mt. Everest was also caused by tectonic forces. It sits at 29,029', incredibly twice the height of Mt. Whitney). In regards to Whitney, it got me thinking- just what exactly made this massive peak? Turns out, lots of earthquakes forced this massive granite slab into the sky; the largest one in modern times happens to be a 7.4 on the Richter scale on March 26th, 1872. Amazingly, that's not the biggest in recent history for California. Here's the list...

• 7.9 at Fort Tejon (i.e. the 'Grapevine' between LA and Bakersfield on the 5 freeway). This quake left an incredible 220 mile crack in the ground. 
• 7.8 in San Francisco. The great 1906 quake. Possibly 3000 people were killed which is significant because the population at the time was only 400,000 people. That's 7.5% of the population. Also 50% of the population was displaced due to the quake. 
• 7.4 in Owens Valley (i.e. Mt. Whitney area) in 1872 as mentioned above.
• 7.4 just west of Eureka in 1980
• 7.3 in Kern County in 1952. Unfortunately there were also three magnitude 6 or greater aftershocks within 5 days of the main 7.3 quake. 
• 7.3 in Landers in 1992
• 7.2 in Mendocino in 1923 and Cape Mendocino (about 150 miles away) in 1992
• 7.1 in Lompoc in 1927
• 7.1 in Ludlow (east of Barstow- you know where this is you River Rats) in 1999
• 7.1 in Ridgecrest just last week as mentioned above
• 7.0 in El Centro in 1940

So if you're keeping score, that's 11 earthquakes of 7.0 or stronger the past 162 years. That may seem like a long time but if you've been here in California long enough, expect to see a very large quake once every 15 years. That's 1 too many for my liking. 

PIC OF THE WEEK:

It's amazing what people seek out to surf now. Back in the day it was perfect Pipeline or the long rights of Rincon. Now it's the ugliest, meanest, thickest, coldest beast they can find. Before you know it, someone's going to recreate this in a wave pool and charge people to get slammed.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
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Long Lost Winklevoss Triplet
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