For a good explainer on why El Niño causes sea level rise along the West Coast, see this post.
Another illustration of how climate change will continue to provide eye-popping YouTube content.
Small comfort, but I take what I can get.
Nonstop swells combined with a “super” El Niño phenomenon have washed away truckloads of sand from Newport Beach and other parts of the California coast, exposing hazards buried a century ago. They’ve also delivered some of the best waves anyone here can remember.
“It’s been great,” Collins, 21, said as he waxed his board atop a six-foot-high sand cliff that’s edging ever closer to $20 million oceanfront homes.
He tries not to think about the possibility of getting skewered on ancient rebar. “Good thoughts and good vibes,” he said.
The Wedge was created in the 1930s, when the Army Corps of Engineers extended a rock jetty some 2,000 feet out from the beach to protect the entrance to Newport Harbor. Because it protrudes at a slight angle, swells approaching from the south or southwest bounce off the jetty and mutate into triangular peaks—hence the spot’s name.
Self-declared “Wedgelord” Matt VanderMeer, 53, said recent months have surpassed even the legendary summer of 1982, also an El Niño year. “I got it every day for almost two weeks,” VanderMeer said. The water is so warm he doesn’t know where his wetsuit is. “Usually you get one or two days a month, at best.”
El Niño can create a surfing paradise in Southern California. It elevates sea-surface temperatures across the eastern Pacific, fueling hurricanes that send big swells to south-facing beaches.
But the phenomenon also creates wind patterns that cause local sea levels to temporarily rise by six to 12 inches, said Brett Sanders, a University of California at Irvine professor who studies sand movement. Those conditions—and unusually consistent groundswells from storms off New Zealand—are scouring sand from many beaches.
Recent weeks have seen a sea wall damaged in Long Beach, staircases destroyed in San Diego County and dozens of oceanfront mansions tagged as unsafe.
California local TV report has a familiar line – “Never seen anything like this.”