SWELL visited the International Surf Festival at Redondo Beach this weekend where many were asking, “What’s up with the weather?”
This is the question on many people’s minds lately visiting or hanging around California’s beaches. While the East Coast experienced it’s heat waves last month, Californians have been sitting around with nothing but gray skies and misty mornings just waiting for that Golden State sunshine. So what is responsible for this Gloomy weather? The answer lies in the cooler than normal ocean temperatures up and down the West coast. While the sun does its thing to heat the air inland and high in the sky, the ocean creates a layer of dense, cooler air that get trapped beneath. The result is a moisture-ridden, foggy Marine Layer in our coastal communities that rarely burns off before the late afternoon.
This pattern generally occurs in the spring time where dominant N/NW winds drop the water temp and give us the notorious “May Grays” and “June Glooms”. This year however happens to be a La Niña weather pattern where water temps are 3 to 5 degrees cooler than normal, thus giving us the terrible weather. Sadly all we can do at this point is keep our fingers crossed and hope King Neptune dishes us up some warmer water temps or at least some decent consolation surf. Until then it’s all steamers and groveling for us out here on the West coast.
So instead of moping around we have tried to come up with some reasons to embrace the “gloom”…
1) You can pretend you are in beautiful San Francisco.. Read that novel, sport that scarf and ride a fixie!
2) Reason to upgrade your wetsuit gear early.. spoil yourself with those new booties or that sick wet/dry bag.. perfect gift ideas too…
3) Excuse to Head to the River… did we mention we are giving away a boat?
4) Excuse to head to vegas.. like you needed an excuse
5) You can get work done.. weather it’s book work, house work, or work-outs, there is fewer time to waste your summer away just lounging in the sand
6) The weather is Albino and Ginger friendly! no need for our fair skinned buddies to battle it out under the blistering sun for hours on end
7) Endless amount of small talk material about the weather… plus you can impress someone now with your knowledge of the weather patterns
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