Could be better, could be worse.
SURF
Kind of a fun week of surf. Some fun SW swell showed up Tuesday and was crossed up by small NW windswell. By Wednesday morning, best spots in far north county SD and the OC had head high+ sets. The weather was a little cool and gloomy- typical of spring- but it couldn’t put a damper on my amp for the surf. Today we have new SW groundswell filling in along with new NW windswell filling in again. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Waves are running waist to chest high and unfortunately there is 5mph W wind on it already due to a passing weak front. Looks like the swells will peak tomorrow with head high+ sets in the OC. Sunday will have dropping SW and not much NW. Weather all weekend unfortunately will be cool and mostly cloudy. Nothing spectacular on the wave or weather front this weekend but it will be worth it to go to the beach and get some turns in. Water temps thankfully are in the low 60’s finally and tides the next few days are about -1’ at breakfast, 3’ at 3pm and 2’ at sunset. Make sure to keep up to date on the surf and conditions at North County Surf/Twitter.
FORECAST
After the SW starts to fade by Monday, looks like NW windswell picks up fairly strong by Tuesday and holds into Wednesday. Best spots in south county SD may have some head high+ waves. Nothing really exciting except maybe some more NW windswell on the models for late next week. When the heck are we going to get a solid southern hemi swell?!
WEATHER
Here’s a riddle: What do you get when you cross a cloudy, wet, cold winter with a sunny, dry, warm summer? Wummer? Sinter? No, it’s Spring! It’s what we have on tap this weekend. Not exactly warm and sunny. Not exactly cold and stormy. Low clouds today should break up for a sunny and mostly cool and breezy day. Saturday the clouds should hang around all day and SW winds will prevail. Saturday night and Sunday morning we’re in store for deeper cloudy and cool conditions and light rain or drizzle on your Easter Eggs. Sorry kids. Luckily that exits the area by Monday and a warm up kicks in by mid-week. By Wednesday, we hit the high 70’s at the beaches and sunny conditions.
BEST BET
Tough one here. Either some fun SW/NW combo surf for Saturday but gloomy conditions. Or fun NW windswell on Wednesday and sunny conditions. I’ll work on my tan and go for Wednesday.
NEWS OF THE WEEK
Summer's almost here and it’s time for girls in bikinis, backyard bbq’s, and lounging by the wave pool. Wave pool?! If you’ve got a huge wad of cash and hate waiting around for inconsistent southern hemi swells, then having your own wave pool is the answer. Our friends at Science Daily shed some light on the technologies. There’s a lot out there, but the original and most popular (i.e. Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon, the late great Ocean Dome in Miyazaki, and a dark moment in ASP history- Allentown) are made by a huge compressor. The compressor is fired up and feeds four gigantic air blowers. Then a computer controls chambers that generate the waves. When the chamber lids are closed, air from the blowers pushes the water out and makes a wave. When the valve is open, the balance tank fills with water, getting ready to make the next wave. It works just like a toddler pushing a cup upside-down onto water in a bathtub. There’s a lot of mechanics but it’s really just simple physics. At the big wave capital of the world- Wisconsin- more than one million gallons of water constantly run through the Big Kahuna wave pool, and 30,000 gallons of water travel in and out of the chambers every few seconds. But enough of the fluff. Here’s some details on how we’re going to solve the problem of overcrowding at your local break in the 22nd century…
Background: Outdoor and indoor wave pools and water theme parks are hugely popular in the US. These are sanitized, man-made versions of God’s gift to surfers. In wave pools, the water is chlorinated, the beach is concrete, and the waves arrive like clockwork once every few minutes. The densest collection of wave pools can be found in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin (weird name for a town, I know) home to 18 water parks. Such parks are good when the real waves are flat, but they also illustrate some fascinating basic science about waves.
Making Waves: Waves are the result of wind traveling over water. Imagine a breeze blowing gently across the surface of a flat ocean, creating small waves. The waves arise from the surface tension of water. The molecules on the water's surface hold together and form a sort of 'skin', which makes the surface stretchy, and therefore 'sticky.' As more air passes over that sticky surface, it grabs some molecules and pushes them into molecules ahead, which push on other molecules, and so on, so that the wave travels to the opposite end of the shore. The water mostly stays in place; it's the disturbance caused by the wind that is moving across the water. In strong wind, the waves become choppy. The stronger the wind, the larger the waves, because as the waves move, they run into each other and merge adding their energy together to become bigger and move faster.
How Wave Pools Work: There are a number of ways to recreate wave action with just a basin of water and a means of creating a periodic disturbance: a strong blast of air, perhaps, or a rotating paddle wheel. In one such approach, there is a pump room below the pool, which causes a high-speed fan to blow air into a wide metal pipe, leading to an exhaust port. In the middle of the pipe is a butterfly valve, a wide disc with a swiveling metal axis rod. When the rod swivels so the disc rests horizontally in the pipe, it blocks the air flow, while swiveling the rod the other way moves the disc to a vertical position, allowing air to flow. A hydraulic piston swivels the rod back and forth at regular intervals, causing short burst of pressurized air to flow up the exhaust port and blow on the surface of the water causing an artificial wind. This creates small waves across the water pool's surface.
Bigger is Better: A large wave pool doesn't push on the water with air or a paddle; instead, the wave machine dumps a large volume of water into the deep end of the pool. The surge in water travels all the way to the artificial 'breach', so that the water level in the pool once again balances out. Dumping more water into the pool increases the size and strength of the wave. There are five basic components to such a system: a water pumping system, a water collection reservoir, a series of release valves at the bottom of the reservoir, a giant slanted swimming pool, and a return canal, leading from the breach area back to the pumping system. In this scenario, the water is constantly circulating, moving from the deep end of the pool, out to the canal, around to the pumping system, and back into the deep end of the pool.
Now that you’re an expert on wave pool mechanics, all you need now is a sugar daddy like Bill Gates to build you one so you can have rideable surf 24/7, 365 days a year.
BEST OF THE BLOG
Mid-week surf reports, wave and weather forecasts, and a sneak peak at the watering holes of all watering holes- Union. Beer and barrels. What could be better? Make sure to check out the rest of the blog below!
PIC OF THE WEEK
If you’ve been reading THE Surf Report over the years, then you know I like waves in the little tucked away corners of the world. You can have the well known crowded spots- I’ll be surfing the little wedge down the beach by myself. Today’s pic is from ESPN’s website of all places. I guess it stands for Empty Surf Possible Nowadays. Didn’t know that, did ya?
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
Pundit
The Real Easter Bunny
Endless Summer III Star
