California’s battered beaches are getting giant waves

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Large surf driven by hurricane force winds will slam already battered beaches along the California coast this weekend, with select big wave surf ...

Large surf driven by hurricane force winds will slam already battered beaches along the California coast this weekend, with select big-wave surf spots like Mavericks expected to see waves as tall as 50 feet.

"I don’t see 25 to 35 feet waves crashing along the coast very often” said Roger Gass, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Monterey.

The agency issued its first high-surf warning since December 2024 for the entire coastline from Mexico to Oregon until Sunday, along with coastal flood advisories from San Diego through San Francisco.

Fortunately, the North Pacific swell is not coinciding with the type of peak high tides that led to flooding in October and are expected to be even higher toward the end of the month.

The pulses of warm water known as a Kelvin wave, a major effect of El Niño, have expanded the ocean along the West Coast, at times lifting the tides by more than a foot and raising fears of catastrophic flooding in coming months, as winter storms roll off the Pacific.

The waves on Saturday did not dissuade surfers in Southern California, where the wind was mild, from Black’s Beach in San Diego to Rincon in Ventura County. In the north, top big-wave riders were flying in to push the limits of the sport at Mavericks, just north of Half Moon Bay, which had a morning window for tow-in surfing before wind churned the surface up.

"This is our first weekend of the season” said Caitlyn Sinclair of Mavericks Surf Company. "Everyone is pretty excited.”

Saturday morning jet skies were towing surfers into the oceanic behemoths in wild and woolly conditions.

"Everyone’s coming” said Frank Quirarte, who runs a group of volunteers that rescues surfers from massive waves using Jet Skis. Quirarte and Sinclair said surfers are coming in from Florida, Europe and Hawaii, and they expect folks want get out there to watch.

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