THE Surf Report- Early Edition

Icebergs in the lineup. 

SURF:

That pretty much sums up this past week. FREEZING. Air temps yesterday hit the mid-30's at the coast and inland areas were below the freezing mark. And when I say 'inland', I'm not talking Julian or Big Bear. I'm talking Mission Viejo and Vista. And if that wasn't bad enough, the N winds earlier in the week made our water temps PLUMMET to the mid-50's. Where's El Nino when you need him? Luckily for us, air temps are warming up and July is just 19 short weeks away! But we've got surfing coming later this weekend so let's embrace winter while we're here. 

Surf looks small and clean for Friday/Saturday then on Sunday, surf picks up to the chest high range (shoulder high in SD) BUT.. a new weak storm arrives late in the day. Basically, as the surf picks up on Sunday, the wind does too. And here's some numbers to crunch on the next few days:

• Sunrise and sunset are:
• 6:39 AM sunrise
• 5:26 PM sunset

• Water temps are in the mid to high 50's (thanks NW winds)

• And tides this weekend have HUGE swings (a full 8'!):
• 6.5' at breakfast
• -1.5' mid-afternoon
• 1' at sunset

FORECAST:

The weak cold front on Sunday evening rolls outta here by Monday and we've semi-messy shoulder high sets from the NW. Tuesday is cleaner and the NW hangs around fortunately. 

After that, the 2nd half of next week looks small again with just waist high+ NW. We also have some small background SW swells in the water but only expect the OC to see some waist high+ surf from them. Make sure to check out Twitter/North County Surf if anything changes between now and then. 

BEST BET: 

Early Sunday if the NW swell picks up before the wind does! Or Tuesday with fun NW and cleaner conditions. 

WEATHER:

It's like living in Montana around here- no surf and freezing temps! (At least you can surf the Snake River). How cold was this past week? Here's the official report from Wednesday:

• Ramona was 19 degrees
• El Cajon was 30
• San Diego was 38

And the high temp was only 27 in Big Bear and 59 in Indio (yes, the desert can get cold too). 

So are the cold temps done? Looks like it for the time being. We've got a slight warm up in process and should hit the mid 60's at the beaches by Saturday. As advertised above, there is a weak storm moving through late Sunday which may only give us a 1/4" of rain at best. Sure seems like we haven't had a big storm in awhile. Newport is actually under where they should be at only 89% of normal for rainfall (6.47"). Oceanside and San Diego fortunately are still slightly above at 110% and 133% (7.49" and 7.23") respectively. So any luck with more storms next week? It's a toss up. Forecast charts aren't that confident right now; we might get some showers or we might not. They do though seem confident enough to say there are no major storms at least. Just look for cool breezy conditions most of next week with a chance of showers every few days. 

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Does it seem like everyone is surfing faster these days? Maybe it's the resurgence of twin fins. Or everyone is trying to be the next Mick 'White Lightening' Fanning or Terry 'The Sultan of Speed' Fitzgerald. Or you've been watching too many clips of J-Bay and Skeleton Bay. Or... maybe the ocean is just speeding up. A recent report by the Washington Post says that may be the case. Here's what they found:

Three-quarters of the world’s ocean waters have sped up their pace in recent decades, scientists reported Wednesday, a massive development that was not expected to occur until climate warming became much more advanced. The change is being driven by faster winds, which are adding more energy to the surface of the ocean. That, in turn, produces faster currents and an acceleration of ocean circulation. It’s the latest dramatic finding about the stark transformation of the global ocean — joining revelations about massive coral die-offs, upheaval to fisheries, ocean-driven melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, increasingly intense ocean heat waves and accelerating sea level rise.

“The Earth is our patient, and you look for symptoms of how it is reacting to anthropogenic greenhouse gas forcing,” said Michael McPhaden, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researcher and one author of the new study in Science Advances. “This is another symptom.” The new research found that 76 percent of the global ocean is speeding up, when the top 2,000 meters of the ocean are taken into account. The increase in speed is most intense in tropical oceans and especially the vast Pacific. Scientists aren’t certain of all the consequences of this speedup yet. But they may include impacts in key regions along the eastern coasts of continents, where several currents have intensified. The result in some cases has been damaging ocean hotspots that have upended marine life.

The study was led by Shijian Hu, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who worked with McPhaden and other experts in China, Australia and the United States. The researchers used a global network of devices called Argo floats, as well as other data sets, to reach their conclusions. They found a global increase in wind speed over the ocean of about 2 percent per decade since the 1990s, which translates into about a 5 percent increase per decade in the speed of ocean currents. Since these currents do not move very fast to begin with, the change would not be noticeable from, say, the bow of a ship. One current, the Pacific’s South Equatorial Current, typically moves at about a mile per hour, so the speed increase over one decade would only be to around 1.05 miles per hour, McPhaden said. Still, taken across the entire planet, this represents an enormous change and a tremendous input of wind energy. And it was not expected to happen yet.

The study notes that in extreme climate warming scenarios, a speedup of global winds also occurs — but the change was expected to peak at the end of this century, after vastly more warming than has happened so far. This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show, McPhaden said. The researchers admit they cannot prove that the change they’ve detected is driven solely by greenhouse gases. The oceans, particularly the Pacific, have natural cycles that drive them as well. However, they argue that the changes that have occurred are “far larger than that associated with natural variability.” And this is not happening in isolation — multiple large changes have been detected in the world’s oceans of late. “It’s analogous to the changes in sea level in terms of the accelerated rise over the last 25 years,” McPhaden said. “And these may be connected, and likely are.”

Having detected a massive global change, the researchers say they have not yet teased out the local consequences. But they are bound to be substantial. “Perhaps the most important consequence is the increased redistribution of heat around the planet that stronger circulation would bring,” said Alex Sen Gupta, an ocean and climate expert at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who commented on the study but was not involved in the research. “This would affect temperature distributions and could affect weather patterns — but more work would be needed to make these links.” Another ocean and climate expert, Edward Vizy of the University of Texas at Austin, said he suspected the scientists were onto something with their findings but also that the change may not be as large as they are reporting. “I’m sure our ocean observations have improved in the early 2000s, so I wonder how much of the change in the ocean reanalyses is a reflection of the inclusion of this information,” he said.

So far, when it comes to the effect of climate change on ocean currents, the largest amount of attention has been paid to the North Atlantic region. Here, a major current system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — is moving not faster, but slower. This circulation, however, is not driven simply by winds — it is also propelled by the density of cold seawater, which determines how much water can sink and flow back southward in the deep ocean. So, the results are not necessarily contradictory.

In related research, McPhaden and his colleagues have found that around the globe, a key set of ocean currents, which are located on the western side of ocean basins, have been shifting their movements and in some cases, intensifying. As they’ve done so, these currents have often left behind zones of extreme warming as they transport warm waters to new places. These changes, too, are being driven by shifting ocean winds, so they could be connected.

Off the eastern coast of Australia and Tasmania, for example, a current called the East Australian Current has intensified and pushed farther southward, bringing warmer waters to the Tasmanian coast and devastating the native kelp forest ecosystem that had once thrived there. The new study shows a marked current intensification in this region. “There is a compelling logic that says that these are related,” McPhaden said. The current study does not focus on local impacts, however, but rather, on the global picture. “It’s just sort of taking the pulse of the planet,” McPhaden said. “It’s a surprise that this kind of result comes out so robustly.”

So what does this all mean? In laymen's terms: If you hate paddling against a current, better hit the gym. 

PIC OF THE WEEK:

This shot I came across on that 'other' surf forecasting website. Rhymes with Smurfspine. Just too good to not share it again in case you missed it. Taken by acclaimed surf photographer Jeremiah Klein. If you don't know where this spot is by now, then you'll never know. Just a ridiculous picture. Looks like Pipe except that it's beachbreak. Have fun paddling out. A few comments/questions:

• Just how big are those waves? Judging by the houses in the foreground, I'm guessing 25'? 
• In a city with close to a million people, how come no one is out? (Answer to that question further below)
• I zoomed in a counted 45 waves lined up to the horizon. Now THAT'S what you call a set. 
• Those islands in the background? The world famous Farrallons. Why are they famous? Here's some interesting facts to say the least:
• Five species of seals come to rest on the islands, and in some cases breed. These are the northern elephant seal, harbor seal, Steller's sea lion, California sea lion, and the northern fur seal. Sealers took 150,000 northern fur seals from the Farallons between 1810 and 1813, followed by Russian fur hunters who lived on the Farallons and extirpated the pinnipeds from the islands. If the Farallon Islands population reaches its estimated historical size of 100,000 individuals, it could account for approximately one-fifth of the world's northern fur seal population.
• What LOVES seals? Or should I say what loves to EAT seals? Great Whites of course! In 1970 Farallon biologists witnessed their first shark attack, on a Steller's sea lion. During the next fifteen years, more than one hundred attacks on seals and sea lions were observed at close range. By the year 2000, biologists were logging almost eighty attacks in a single season. In comparison, we've had 3 shark attacks in north county San Diego the past decade (that we know of). The Farallons have 1 EVERY 4 DAYS. 
• The seasonal shark population at the Farallones is unclear, with estimates from thirty to one hundred (RAD! Up to 100 Great Whites circling that little island! And everyone is freaked out there's 1 great white cruising the beaches of Encinitas). The Farallons are unique in the size of the great whites that are attracted. The average length of a full-grown great white shark is 13'-16', with a weight of 1,500 to 2,430 lbs. (that's over a ton people), females generally being larger than males. Farallon great whites range between the "smaller" males at 13' to the females, which generally range between 17'-19 ft'. A killer whale was recorded killing a great white near the Farallons in 1997. (That's not even funny. On that note, how come no one's made a summer blockbuster movie about THAT?!) 
• From 1946 to 1970, the sea around the Farallons was used as a NUCLEAR DUMPING SITE for radioactive waste under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of the dumping took place before 1960, and all dumping of radioactive wastes by the United States was terminated in 1970. By then, 47,500 containers (55-gallon steel drums) had been dumped in the vicinity. The materials dumped were mostly laboratory materials containing traces of contamination (no big deal, right?) and it's been said much of the radioactivity had decayed by 1980. (Sure). The exact location of the containers and the potential hazard the containers pose to the environment are unknown. According to the EPA, attempts to remove the barrels would likely produce greater risk than leaving them undisturbed. Containers were shipped to Hunters Point Shipyard, then loaded onto barges for transportation to the Farallons. Containers were weighted with concrete. Those that floated were sometimes shot with rifles to sink them (GREAT idea). In January 1951, the highly radioactive hull of USS Independence, which was used in Operation Crossroads (part of the infamous atomic testing in the south Pacific) and then loaded with barrels of radioactive waste, was scuttled in the area. (Another brilliant idea. Who in our government thinks up these things?!)
• And even with ALL OF THAT being said, three people successfully SWAM from the Farallons to the Golden Gate, with two more swimming to points north of the gate. (Seriously. You can't make this stuff up). The first, Ted Erikson, made the swim in September 1967, with the second, Joseph Locke, swimming to the Golden Gate on July 12, 2014, in 14 hours. The third person, and the first woman to complete the distance, Kimberley Chambers, made it in just over 17 hours on Friday August 7, 2015. You can't make this stuff up. 

And if you're thinking about swimming or paddling out, check out more images from Jeremiah on Instagram at @miahklein. 

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

Cool Under Pressure

Bought The Stairway To Heaven At A Garage Sale

Surfed The Gnarliest Slab Last Week- Full Dectuple Ups!