THE Surf Report

 

Please Hold For The Next Available Swell

SURF:

Nice weather we're having. Too nice in fact as high pressure continues to be in control and the swells get pushed into Alaska. Literally. We did though have a small storm off the Aleutians a few days ago make a valiant effort to send surf our way for the weekend.

Looks like some new waist high NW filling in Saturday afternoon with chest high waves towards SD. That will last into Sunday morning. Woohoo! And here's the tides, sun, and water temps for the next few days:

• Sunrise and sunset:
• 6:24 AM sunrise
• 4:45 PM sunset
• we're racing towards the shortest day of the year (December 20th) where the sun will come up at 6:47 and set at 4:47

• Due to the lack of cold fronts recently, the water temps are pleasant and holding in the low 60's

• And tides are simple again this weekend:
• 4' at sunrise
• almost 6' mid-morning
• and down to -0.2' late afternoon

FORECAST:

Looking for some good news? Well if the forecast models are correct, we may have the storm door opening in the near future. 

Models show a weak cold front coming through our area on Tuesday and in it's wake, we should see some short interval NW windswell on Wednesday/Thursday for chest high sets. On it's heels, looks like we could see slightly bigger shoulder high sets for next weekend. 

And if you really want to believe my astrologer, she says it looks like we've got better NW and really late season S swell on the charts for the 1st week of December. She also told me years ago I was going to get rich of THE Surf Report so take the long range forecast with a grain of salt. Regardless, the Pacific could be coming back to life again. 

WEATHER:

Good news and bad news. Let's take our medicine first- no real rain in the near future. Good news- the Pacific is at least trying. For the weekend, we've got a mild Santa Ana on tap for more sunny skies and temps in the high 70's. Models then show a weak cold front moving through on Tuesday for a chance of DRIZZLE. Yep- small droplets of water vapor trying to act like sprinkles. More Santa Ana conditions look likely for Thanksgiving but it looks like a few storms are taking aim at the Pacific NW around the first week of December. If that holds true, hopefully it pushes our high pressure to the E and we start to see some more cold fronts in a couple weeks. If anything changes between now and then, make sure to follow North County Surf on Twitter!

BEST BET:

Pretty much next weekend- unless you like small NW windswell for Wednesday. 

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Ahhh, remember the good ol' days when we had waves and weather? Seems like years ago that we got 1" of rain in late October and the surf was firing around here. It was nice to see overhead NW swell. Or if you're a charger, 60' surf like they had in the Pacific NW. Here's the scoop from the LA Times on the swell resulting from the historic atmospheric river last month:

The bomb cyclone and atmospheric river that pummeled Northern California in late October produced exceptionally heavy rain and high winds. But it also battered the California coast with some epic ocean waves. During the storm, peak individual wave heights of as much as 60 feet were measured from Washington to California, according to researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

For example, the No. 29 Point Reyes buoy, located in 1,805 feet of water 25 miles west of Point Reyes, recorded a significant wave height of 30.6 feet on Oct. 25. That's the second-largest wave event in that buoy’s 23 years of recording data. Only in December 2015, an El Niño year, did it record bigger waves.

Significant wave height is calculated by averaging the height of the biggest one-third of waves during a 30-minute period, according to James Behrens, a program manager at the Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP). Typically, some individual waves at a given station can jack up to as much as twice that average, and the Point Reyes buoy recorded a maximum individual wave height of 50.5 feet.

To the north, the No. 179 buoy off Astoria, Ore., recorded significant wave heights of 35 feet, with individual waves slightly over 60 feet. This set a record for the station, which came online in 2011.

Later, as the storm weakened and the front sagged down the California coast, the No. 71 Harvest buoy, in 1,791 feet of water west of Point Conception, recorded a significant wave height of almost 30 feet, with a maximum individual wave height of 50 feet.

The deep low-pressure system that generated these historically large and powerful waves was churning off the Washington coast. It was part of a series of storms and atmospheric rivers that hit the West Coast in quick succession from Oct. 19 to 24. It had undergone explosive intensification called bomb-cyclogenesis, which means its central pressure dropped at least 24 millibars (a measure of pressure) in 24 hours. Generally speaking, the lower the atmospheric pressure, the more intense the storm. Mid-latitude or extratropical cyclones such as this are low-pressure systems that generally occur between 30 degrees and 60 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere.

This was the second bomb cyclone to develop in this part of the eastern Pacific Ocean in a few days. When its central pressure dipped to 942.5 millibars on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 24, it set a record for storms in this part of the ocean off the U.S. Pacific Northwest, and was equivalent to a Category 4 hurricane. The Saffir-Simpson scale classifies hurricanes based on wind speed and central pressure. At the time, the storm was about 345 miles west of Aberdeen, Wash., and its winds were raking Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.

The waves produced by the ferocious storm were large, but according to a summary by the National Weather Service in Monterey, forecasters were most impressed by the amount of wave energy pushing up onto the beaches. For example, they noted that water overran most of the beach at Carmel, and splashed rhythmically against the sea wall. Similar scenes elsewhere suggest that beaches were still in their summer configurations. In other words, not yet sculpted by winter storms, so not as steep and without significant protective sand bars — wholly unprepared for such a potent early-season blast.

Satellite images depict a classic comma-shaped system, with the deep low spinning counterclockwise off the coast of Washington State, and a moisture plume stretching back to the subtropical Central Pacific. This formed the tail of the comma. Remnants of Typhoon Namtheun, which had dissipated west of the International Date Line on Oct. 19, contributed to the plume.

This atmospheric river was the strongest to make landfall over San Francisco since January of 2017, and the fifth-strongest since 2000, according to the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes. This was the first exceptional atmospheric river to hit the region since February 2015, and was the strongest October atmospheric river to make landfall in the Bay Area in 40 years. Drenching rain caused flooding and triggered multiple mud and debris slides in Northern California.

The atmospheric river was like a fire hose trained on Central and Northern California, reaching its peak strength, a category 5, near Point Reyes, hammering Marin and Sonoma counties with its heaviest moisture transport around midday on Sunday.

As the storm abated in Northern California on Monday, Oct. 25, the sound of drumming rain was replaced by the buzzsaw-like whine of jet skis. Tow-in surfers at Mavericks, the surf spot south of San Francisco at Half Moon Bay, took up the challenge of the post-bomb cyclone waves. Surfline reported "Victory-at-Sea conditions," surfer parlance for big, ugly, stormy waves. The expression comes from the 1950s NBC television series of the same name about naval warfare during World War II.

Notably, CDIP includes last month's West Coast bomb cyclone on a page of wave observations, along with East Coast hurricanes and Nor'easters. CDIP, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, operates more than 30 active buoys along the West Coast with its partners, and is part of a network of about 80 stations that also cover the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and locations in the Caribbean, according to Behrens, the program manager.

Behrens said that his research group studies the wave data from buoys because erosive storms such as the recent bomb cyclones “are as powerful as the hurricanes on the East Coast, and the coastlines are taking the brunt.”

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Volcanoes are disruptive forces as we know. But in a silver lining, they can also create surf spots- as shown in this birds eye view. Just hope the only activity here are the waves peeling down the point- not lava still bubbling below. 

Keep Surfing, 
Michael W. Glenn
Eloquent
Pitching My Tent Tonight At Walmart For Black Friday
Selling My 1st THE Surf Report As An NFT

And THE Surf Report will be dark next week, so make sure to call 976-SURF for all your forecasting needs. 

THE Surf Report

 

High Pressure/Low Surf

SURF:

Let's clear things up- there's a difference between offshore winds and Santa Ana winds. Both come from the same direction (NE) but have different impacts. Offshore winds may happen after the passing of cold front, the resulting cold front may create swells for us to ride, and we may get beneficial rains. Santa Anas on the other hand... usually occur from a large high pressure covering the W coast and the result is a big storm block for the southern half of the state. Meaning: Large surf is aimed N of us, rain is nowhere in sight (increasing our wildfire threat), and the strong N winds drop our water temps. Take a guess if I'm a fan of Santa Anas or not. Good guess. So what does that mean for our upcoming weekend? Thank goodness this doesn't apply to the Southern Hemisphere. 

We've got a small SW continuing tomorrow which will be joined by more NW windswell for chest high sets in SD and the OC. Sunday looks small in the waist high+ range. And here's the tides, sun, and water temps for the next few days:

• Sunrise and sunset:
• 6:17 AM sunrise
• 4:48 PM sunset
• With the lack of clouds, it shouldn't be a problem to paddle out at 6 am and paddle in at 5pm

• Water temps are cooler no thanks to the Santa Ana N winds. Look for 60 at most beaches

• And tides are simple this weekend:
• 5' at sunrise
• 1.5' at lunch
• and back to 4.5' at sunset

FORECAST:

Looks like more the same next week- nothing big- but still fun and clean weather. 

Monday we see a small reinforcement out of the SSW for chest high sets towards the OC. 

On its heels is another chest high NW on Wednesday with better waves towards SD. Long term, I'm hoping high pressure breaks down Thanksgiving week and we see bigger NW swells and hopefully a chance of showers. 

WEATHER:

The rain last month seems like years ago. The good start to our rainy season is on hold for now as high pressure and Santa Ana conditions make tee shirts and shorts mandatory. Looks like we'll have a return of low clouds by Monday. Most of next week looks cooler and seasonal- and still no rain. If anything changes between now and then, make sure to follow North County Surf on Twitter!

BEST BET:

Friday with small but fun combo swell most everywhere, Monday in the OC with small but fun SSW swell, or Wednesday in SD with small but fun NW swell. 

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

As we wait for November 'fall' weather to arrive, here's what happened in our atmosphere on this date in history...

• 1997: An EF1 tornado touched down near the Irvine Spectrum Center, and continued on the ground for a quarter mile. The tornado wreaked havoc on a construction site and damaged numerous cars.
• 1994: An F0 tornado in Portola Hills knocked a mobile home on its side. Heavy rain also occurred in Orange County, resulting in multiple mudslides and damage to 15 homes.
• 1993: An F0 tornado in Portola Hills (near Tustin) knocked a mobile home on its side. Rain, though not especially intense, caused several debris flows from recent burn scars. In Laguna Beach, 15 homes were damaged, with six suffering extensive damage.
• 1985: Heavy rain from a cold, slow-moving storm with embedded thunderstorms started on this day and ended on 11/13. It produced 4.25 inches in Julian, 3.42 inches in La Mesa, 2.63 inches in SDSU, 2.44 inches in Vista, 2.40 inches in Lemon Grove, 2.39 inches in Alpine, 2.19 inches in Poway, 2.13 inches in Chula Vista, and 1.84 inches in San Diego. Flooding occurred in Spring Valley and Mission Valley, with erosion damage in La Mesa. The storm dropped 14 inches of snow in Mt. Laguna, five inches in Julian and through the San Gabriel Mountains. Light snow fell as low as Alpine (1800 feet elevation).
• 1982: Lake Cuyamaca reported a two- day snowfall total of 22.5 inches.
• 1978: 12 inches of snow fell in Palomar Mountain, the greatest daily snowfall on record for November.
• 1954: 1.79 inches of rain fell in Victorville, the greatest daily amount on record for November. Riverside got 2.11 inches, also a daily record for the month.
• 1950: It was 30° in Santa Ana, the first date of the season with a freezing temperature on record. It also marks the lowest November temperature on record. This also occurred the next day on 11/12, on 11/24/1952, and on 11/30/1948.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

If you had to scale down this cliff, just to get to this left point, would you? Dumb question; of course you would...

Keep Surfing, 
Michael W. Glenn
Cavalier
Best Man At The Getty Wedding
Just Completed The 'So-Cal Compass Slam': Surfed Blacks on a N swell, Uppers on a W, Malibu on a S, and Avalon on an E

THE Surf Report

Embrace The Cold

SURF:

If having cold, foggy, breezy days means there's surf, then I'm all for it. Fun surf this week with overcast conditions was met with extreme tide swings. 

There were waves to be found- if you knew when and where to look. 

For the weekend, I'll be turning on the Emergency Boardriding System as we have new NW filling in tonight along with peaking SW swell. Look for head high waves on Friday with overhead sets at the best spots in N County SD and the OC. S County SD will have slightly bigger sets due to the dominant NW. For Saturday, it's down a touch but still fun waves. 

Sunday morning starts off slow, but still fun with chest high combo surf, and then a new NW moves in late in the day (as well as SW reinforcements) for more head high+ surf. All in all a good weekend of waves. And here's the tides, sun, and water temps for the next few days:

• Sunrise and sunset- don't forget Daylight Saving Time ends Saturday night:
• Friday/Saturday:
  • 7:12 AM sunrise
  • 5:52 PM sunset
• Sunday:
• 6:12 AM sunrise
• 4:52 PM sunset

• Water temps are still in the low 60's (and probably not getting warmer until April FYI).

• And here are the crazy tides this weekend:
• 4' at sunrise
• 6.5' mid-morning
• down to -1' at sunset

FORECAST:

Firing surf over the weekend spills into Monday with more head high+ combo swell. 

Tuesday is smaller but still fun with chest high sets then we see more NW move in on Wednesday for shoulder high sets. 

And not to confuse things... forecast charts show a couple hurricanes possibly forming off Mainland Mexico this weekend. We are in November you know- not July- so take it with a grain of salt. But if we were to see any surf from 1 or the other, that may be around Wednesday with the new NW too. 

On that note... after that, models show yet more NW moving in for next weekend for head high sets? Make sure that fullsuit dries out between sessions! 

WEATHER:

Big fan of fog? You're in luck. Looks like we have more of it through the foreseeable future. Sun should peak through on Friday, then may be harder to break through for the weekend. We have a weak cold front moving by to the N on Tuesday and we could see some light showers down here. After that, models hint at nicer weather the 2nd half of next week with possible Santa Ana conditions next weekend. If anything changes between now and then, make sure to follow North County Surf on Twitter!

BEST BET:

Where do I start? Friday or Monday with solid combo swell. Or cleaner conditions Wednesday with more smaller NW (and possibly a touch of hurricane S)?

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

If you haven't noticed in the past decade or so, Southern California’s beaches are running out of sand. And they'll continue to shrink unless land use allows more sediment to flow downstream. That's according to Brett Sanders, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, urban planning and public policy at UC Irvine. He wrote a recent article in the LA Times highlighting the plight surfers and beachgoers see on a daily basis. Here's what he had to say:

Do you enjoy a walk on the sand? Throwing down your beach towel and an umbrella to lose yourself for a few hours? Or a family barbecue with the kids building sandcastles? Enjoy it while you can. Southern California’s sandy beaches are under duress and need our help. That became impossible to ignore this September when the beach at San Clemente thinned so much that waves crashed over the rail tracks, making that line impassable. Service between Los Angeles and San Diego was suspended for a week until repairs were completed. Beaches south of Dana Point, from Doheny through San Onofre, are especially at risk.

So far this isn’t primarily about climate change or rising sea levels. It’s about how local development and land use have altered natural processes that would have otherwise replenished the beaches. Sand on beaches is a lot like money in a bank account. It flows in and out, and the balance needs to stay in positive territory to avoid a calamity of problems. The sand deposits flow in from two natural processes: river inputs and cliff erosion. One human process contributes as well: beach nourishment, in which sand from one location is moved to another by machinery.

Sand flows out under the force of waves, which creates rivers of sand along the coast that move material into sheltered areas such as coves, and eventually offshore into deep water. Once the sand is gone, our problems escalate: loss of access for millions of people and damage to property, infrastructure, fragile coastal wetlands and a $26.5-billion recreation and tourism economy. So far with beach loss in Southern California, it’s not that our expenditures have increased, but that our revenue is down. Development across the region has reduced the supply of sediment — in part through hardening of the land surface, which reduces the crucial erosion needed to create new sand, and in part through sediment capture systems used for flood control. Climate change does come into play, though: Decades of drought have limited the number of big storms, which disproportionately account for the transport of sand to the coast.

Erosion impacts would have been felt sooner were it not for the widening of beaches across Southern California in the middle of the last century. The construction of ports, harbors and marinas in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s dug out vast spoils from natural marshlands and sheltered areas, and the riches were placed along the coast. The construction of Dana Point Harbor in the 1960s and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in the 1960s and ’70s contributed to beach widening from Doheny through San Onofre beaches — where beach sand is now vanishing.

Coping will be costly, with major undertakings such as rerouting critical infrastructure and maintaining public access to beaches. Looking forward, climate change could make beach loss much, much worse, depending on how high we drive future sea levels with greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and polar ice melt. Curbing greenhouse gas emissions could still equate to several feet less of future sea level rise through 2100, and that would offer Californians many more days on the beach with family and friends and a far lower price tag for infrastructure adaptation.
Restoring sediment supplies will be crucial as well. Southern California has several options to do this:

• We can retool our flood channels and dams to deliver more sediment to the coast rather than capturing it upstream.
• We can ensure that armoring projects intended to prevent shoreline retreat account for diminished supply of sediment — and make sure those projects do not create barriers to public access.
• We can streamline permitting so local governments can more easily experiment and innovate with dredging and sediment placement, as well as using natural infrastructure such as vegetated dunes so beaches rise with sea level.
• The state and the region can more aggressively pursue federal funding for shoreline stabilization.
• We can collect data and build modeling systems that give us the understanding needed to manage these coastal systems better, avoiding the worst outcomes, sustaining our ecosystems and maximizing the delivery of benefits we’ve enjoyed for decades.

Just as no one event wiped out the beaches, no single solution will renew them in a day. Long-term thinking is essential: The waves will keep washing away sand for as long as the wind blows over the oceans. If we help it, nature will carry sand to the beaches to replenish them.

PIC OF THE WEEK:

In case you're not looking for a white Christmas but something more tropical, there's always points down south to spend the holidays. Nothing wrong with opening presents in boardies. 

Keep Surfing, 
Michael W. Glenn
Comprehensive
Just Bought A Windowless House From Charlie Munger
Former 90's Surf Movie Star