Weather to keep the spirits up

DENNIS McTIGHE

The weekend’s sparkling clean, perfect 78-degree temperature weather

prevented quite a few from delving into depression, including me.

And Friday’s drilling first of the new season’s northwest

groundswells has more than made up for the tragic summer surf season.

It was as north as it gets here in town (310 degrees) just making

it past the Point Conception window and marched in precision,

consistent fashion through the chute between Catalina’s North End and

Palos Verdes.

Usually, we get some degree of blockage being in Catalina’s shadow

on say 270- to 290-degree swell angles. But this one got all its

juice through that northwest slot. El Moro had waves coming in at a

ridiculous near-diagonal angle with perfect fast right peelers at

five-feet plus that took on the form of a right sandbar point break

and with all that sandbar build up from no real souths this summer,

bottom conditions were ripe for shaping some actual spitting right

barrels at places that normally don’t even clear their throat at

places like El Moro.

Oak Street at afternoon low tide was peeling all the way from the

old Gene’s Market reef -- all the way to old Vern Tachner’s place,

past the Dixon’s and Hill’s house. Any real locals know exactly where

I’m talking -- if you weren’t a “yearbooker” as Ron Sizemore quoted,

then never mind.

Out in front of fellow columnist James Pribram’s house

(yearbookers know where it is) was all time on Friday, benefiting

from the sharp angle sets that approached 7- or 8-foot faces and Jamo

and brother John got some beauties right in their own backyard!

At 8:30 a.m. or so Friday, I sleepily shuffle over to my St. Ann’s

office just in time to suddenly get saucer-eyed watching Nick

Hernandez getting chased by a very fast right blasting down the line

at Thalia reef, that measured six feet or bigger.

Rincon’s indicator to the core opening day on Friday marked the

earliest 6- to 8-foot day in the season since a Sept. 24, 1997 banger

hit the Queen of the Coast compliments of Senor El Nino. What was

remarkable is at the very same moment Bate’s Road lefts were

resembling Ulu Watu as Category 4 Nora made landfall north of

Scorpion Bay. So here angle was 165 degrees -- as south southeast as

it gets -- allowing waves to sneak inside the Channel Islands. What a

set-up!

And the wave models show a new round of northwest waves on

Tuesday. Uh, my car got a flat on the way to school, sir.

* DENNIS McTIGHE is a Laguna Beach resident. He earned a

bachelor’s in earth sciences from UCSD and was a U.S. Air Force

weather forecaster at Hickman Air Force Base, Hawaii.