Batten down the hatches!
SURF:
Fairly nice weather this week and a little bit of NW swell is being replaced tonight by a moderate sized SW and NW swell tomorrow. Unfortunately... we have a solid storm bearing down on us tonight and the NW/SW swell combo will be lost in the jumbled mess that we call stormsurf.
FORECAST:
After a messed up weekend of surf, we get cleaner conditions early in the week and small NW swell. Charts show another storm moving down the coast late Wednesday and by Thursday we're back into shoulder high NW stormsurf. And models show a solid storm forming in the Aleutians late next week which would give us overhead surf from the NW towards late Sunday/Monday the 18th/19th. Bears watching.
WEATHER:
As I mentioned earlier, we've got a storm bearing down on us tonight from Northern California. If it wasn't bad enough the Giants won the World Series, they have to give us their crummy weather too. Look for S winds tomorrow around 20mph+ and rain off an on. Not a big storm but it will be a good start to the season with 1/2" of rain predicted. Saturday is a transition day and by Sunday it's cool and clear around here. Charts show another storm coming our way late next Wednesday. If it pans out, look for a little more rain with this one and a little less wind. Once that exits our region, we should have nice weather next weekend.
BEST BET:
Sunday should have leftover peaky NW swell and clean cool conditions. Water quality may be suspect though- don't say I didn't warn ya!
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Back on 10/26, the North County Surf blog reported that a little storm named Hurricane Sandy was spinning harmlessly off Florida but had the potential to do some real damage if it met up with a cold low pressure system in the Northeast. Boy did it ever. The LA Times, Accuweather, and NOAA put out some facts this past week about the ‘Superstorm’ that was one for the ages. Dubbed ‘super’ because:
• It reached 900 miles wide
• Caused billions of dollars in damage
• Claimed at least 55 lives.
• Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, N.J. on October 29 after it transitioned from a tropical to a post-tropical cyclone. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour and a central minimum pressure of 946 millibars at landfall. This preliminary pressure reading was potentially a record low for the Northeast coast, and is pending further review.
• Sandy's large size, with tropical storm force winds extending nearly 500 miles from the center, led to more than 100 fatalities, large-scale flooding, wind damage, and mass power outages in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
• Sandy brought large storm surge and high water levels to much of the coastal Northeast with New Jersey, New York and Connecticut particularly hard hit. The 13.88-foot observed water level at The Battery in New York City was an all-time record for the location, smashing the previous record set in 1960 during Hurricane Donna by more than three feet.
• The Delaware River in Philadelphia also reached a new record high water level of 10.6 feet, surpassing the previous record of 10.5 feet which was set in April 2011 from record rainfall. This new record was due to a combination of heavy precipitation and storm surge.
• Sandy also brought blizzard conditions to the Central and Southern Appalachians, where over a foot of snow fell in six states from North Carolina to Pennsylvania, shattering all-time October monthly and single storm snowfall records. Snowfall totals across the highest elevations approached three feet.
The scope of the disaster from Sandy is still being measured, but AccuWeather gathered a few hard weather facts.
• Top 3 highest snow amounts from Sandy: 26 inches in Maryland; 24 inches in West Virginia; 13 inches in Pennsylvania.
• Super storm's top 3 highest wind gusts: 94 mph, Eatons Neck, N.Y.; 88 mph, Montclair, N.J.; 86 mph, Westerly, R.I.
• Top recorded wave from Sandy: 39.67 feet at a buoy in the open Atlantic 240 miles west of Bermuda.
• Highest rainfall totals from Sandy: 9.57 inches, Oceania/Virginia Beach, Va.; 8.23 inches, Patuxent River, Md.; 5.57 inches, Atlantic City, N.J.
"Thirty, 40, 50 years from now, people will be talking about Sandy," predicted meteorologist Eric Leister in an interview with The Times on Wednesday morning. There are a few infamous storms over the generations, he said, "For this generation, it's likely that Sandy will be that one that people will always be talking about."
The storm is drawing comparisons in the media to other huge East Coast storms from the past -- including the 1938 storm dubbed the Long Island Express. A 2010 New York Times article recalled "the corpses floating down Main Street ... the boats that drifted into the living rooms of flooded houses." That storm devastated Long Island, killing 50 people there among a total of more than 600.
But AccuWeather meteorologist Leister said that, where Sandy is concerned, there really is no good comparison. It was late in the hurricane season, and yet Sandy became a very organized weather system, taking an unusual track up the East Coast, curving inland. "Most storms are more of a glancing blow," he said, running up alongside the coast. But a trough of low pressure over the Great Lakes pulled Sandy inland, he said. Then there's the storm's sheer size -- clouds from Sandy at one point reached from Detroit to Bermuda, Leister said. The storm hit a massive swath of the U.S. and brought a variety of precipitation and damage, he said: "flooding, rain, devastation of the coast, feet of snow in parts of the Appalachians." Those factors make Sandy truly unique, he said.
Ps- the shot above is of Lake Erie. A lake for cryin' out loud!
BEST OF THE BLOG:
The world title race is heating up and we're hoping Parko finally nabs one. And maybe Taj in '13? And I've still got hope for Robbie Page in '14! Anyway, the Pipe Masters will decide the title- the way it should be- December 8th through the 20th- and the North County Surf blog's got the possibilities for Parko, Mick, and Kelly. And of course a mid-week Surf Check and an in depth THE Surf Report - all of that and more in the blog below!
PIC OF THE WEEK:
You know what those guys on the ski are saying? "So psyched! Look at that pit! Ok I'll tow you first." "No, I'll tow YOU first!" "No bro- YOU go first! I insist." "Um, that's not a shark in the wave, is it?..."
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
First
Going to a Kegger at the Electoral College
Won the Vans Quadruple Crown of Surfing
