Forecasters say the swell of the century is on its way, possibly, at some point between now and spring, give or take an ocean.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, USA (Surfing.LA) – Surfers across Orange County have begun calling in sick for a swell that does not yet exist, after months of headlines about a historic El Nino left the region’s lineups in what one city official described as “a state of pre-traumatic stoke.”
The condition, which the Huntington Beach Office of Coastal Morale has formally classified as Anticipatory Swell Disorder, first surfaced in late summer, when federal climate scientists said the warming Pacific was likely to keep strengthening. As one roundup of the federal outlook put it, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center gave El Nino a 97 percent chance of persisting into early spring, with forecasters putting the odds of a very strong event late in the year at about 81 percent.
“Ninety-seven percent,” said Darlene Okafor-Reyes, the office’s deputy director of expectations management, holding a laminated printout she says she has not set down since August. “Do you know what a surfer hears when you say ninety-seven percent? He hears that the other three percent is a conspiracy by people who sell office chairs.”
Swell Forecasts Outpace Actual Swell by a Wide Margin
Local analysts say the gap between predicted surf and delivered surf has never been wider. A spreadsheet kept by the Surf City Forecast Integrity Council, which tracks every use of the words “historic,” “Godzilla” and “generational” in surf coverage, logged 4,112 such references in October, against an average measured wave height at the pier of 2.3 feet.
The council’s chair, retired lifeguard captain Wendell Pruitt, said the ratio crashed the group’s laptop twice. “Our model was built to handle maybe six historic swells a decade,” Pruitt said. “We are now getting six a week, and most of them are a knee-high wind swell wearing a cape.”
Even emergency professionals have tried to calm things down. When surf jumped to around 10 feet at some south-facing beaches in early September, the international fire and rescue association CTIF cautioned that the waves came mainly from Hurricane Marie, a distant storm that never made landfall, and were not necessarily an early sign of the El Nino. Pruitt said Huntington Beach surfers read the warning and drew the opposite conclusion. “Their logic is that if a hurricane that never showed up can do that, the real thing will part the Pacific,” he said.
The same storms have already rearranged the coast to the south. LAist reported that high tides washed out the access road at Lower Trestles and waves damaged beachfront homes in Dana Point, with forecasters expecting El Nino to make the weather more volatile still. In Huntington Beach, this news was received as a movie trailer.
Employers Brace for a Wave of Sudden Illness
Human resources departments are preparing for what the Coastal Employers Roundtable calls “flu season with fins.” A roundtable survey of 400 Huntington Beach managers found that 71 percent expect at least one employee to develop a 24-hour illness timed precisely to a northwest swell, while 18 percent said they plan to develop that illness themselves.
The roundtable has circulated a memo to member businesses. It reads, in part:
Effective immediately, staff who call in sick on any day with a forecast swell period above 16 seconds must describe their symptoms without using the words “offshore,” “overhead,” “firing” or “bro.” Employees who return the following day with wet hair, a sunburned forehead and the calm expression of a person at peace with God will be asked to account for their recovery. Managers are reminded that this policy also applies to them, but more gently.
Marcus Delgado-Finch, a stand-up comic who works the Thursday open mic at a Main Street taco shop, said the hype has changed the town’s sense of time. “My neighbor bought a 9-foot-6 gun for a swell that’s arriving ‘sometime between now and spring,'” Delgado-Finch said. “That’s not a forecast. That’s a horoscope. The man is waxing a surfboard for his rising sign.”
Big-Wave Boards Become the New Lawn Ornament
Shapers report a run on big-wave equipment from customers who, by their own account, have never paddled into anything taller than a lifeguard tower. One Huntington Beach shop said sales of boards longer than 8 feet have tripled since summer, while sales of the wetsuits, leashes and lung capacity required to use them have stayed flat.
“People come in asking for a gun, and I ask where they plan to ride it,” said shaper Tomasz Ellery-Vance. “They say ‘the outer reefs.’ We do not have outer reefs. We have a pier, a parking structure and a man who sells kettle corn.”
The surge has created a market for what retailers now call “display guns,” big-wave boards purchased mainly to lean against an open garage where neighbors can see them. A Surf City Chamber of Commerce analysis estimated that the average gun sold this fall will spend 94 percent of its life indoors, 5 percent on a roof rack outside a coffee shop and 1 percent being photographed next to a dog.
Surfers Seek Protection Against Disappointment
A coalition of local surfers has petitioned state regulators for “swell hype insurance,” which would pay out whenever a forecast labeled historic arrives as something a person could ride on a foam board while holding a breakfast burrito. Organizers said they were inspired by agriculture, where growers have long tried to insure themselves against forces beyond their control, including Minnesota farmers seeking crop insurance against politicians.
“Farmers get paid when the rain doesn’t come,” said coalition spokesperson Jenna Abernathy-Cruz. “We just want to get paid when Godzilla doesn’t come. It’s the same emotional damage, only with more neoprene.”
Officials Urge Patience, Then Refresh the Buoy Page
City officials have asked residents to stay calm, noting that El Nino’s most pronounced effects on California, including shifts in the storm track, usually build later in fall and winter. Three of those officials then left a press briefing early after a phone alert showed a buoy off Point Conception had ticked up by four-tenths of a foot.
The Office of Coastal Morale has also opened a support line. Callers hear a recording of gentle shorebreak and a calm voice reminding them that the ocean “does not follow you back.” The line logged 2,800 calls in its first week, according to a tally shared with bohiney.com, most of them asking whether the recording was a live feed and, if so, how the sandbar looked.
On Thursday, the city’s official surf report for the pier called for two to three feet, light onshore wind, a slow-moving tide and, in a footnote added at the request of the council, “potentially historic.”
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/