Let me just get this out of the way first: I hate winter. Like, literally hate it. Cold water, cold air, and it gets dark at 4 pm. Storms, rain, runoff, dirty water, floods. And thats just the weather. Every person you see is miserable, girls wear layers of boring clothes, and everyone look like pasty white heroin junkies. OK, now having said that, let me explain why i want this winter to last forever... EL NINO. El nino (Spanish for 'the nino') is a weather phenomenon which is most notably marked by warmer than usual water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean during the winter months. This leads to a much more active storm track in the Northern Pacific. When you couple that with a favorable lack of high pressure which would block storms from making it to our latitudes, you get a seemingly endless barrage of pumping swells, and great weather for the West Coast and Hawaii. This has been the scenario for the last 6 weeks or so. One of the best winter seasons ever, and its barely February. The Eddie even ran over in Hawaii.
Now this brings us to today. Groundhog day. Are we in for 6 more weeks of winter? You bet your sweet ass we are. With this week being the first relative break in between booming west groundswells for California, it could seem that the magic has run out, and the swells have stopped. The truth of the matter is that this week is more like the intermission, and act 2 is starting this weekend. High pressure momentarily cut off the upper storm track in the far north, stopping the swell generating storms from forming. Good news is that this only lasted a short time and now, the North Pacific is lining up a series of powerful storms to keep every surfer on the west coast smiling through February. These images are from the last 6 weeks of West Coast perfection... Here's to 6 more..
