Surf Warning Is Sounded for Most Beaches

A high pressure ridge that has settled along the Southern California coast should keep weekend beachgoers waiting until late morning or afternoon for sunshine, but when skies do clear, they should find the surf heavier than usual.

Heavy swells and riptides that battered the Orange County coast this week might continue into the weekend, making local beaches more dangerous than usual, lifeguard officials said.

Hurricane Blanco

The waves, which have been averaging about 6 feet and reaching 10 feet at Newport Beach’s Wedge and the beaches around 18th Street, are the handiwork of Hurricane Blanco. The storm’s 100- to 120-mile-per-hour winds have been raging about 425 miles southwest of Puerto Vallerta, Newport Beach Marine Safety Officer John Blauer said Thursday.

Blauer said weekend beach visitors who are looking for sun and a dip in the ocean rather than high surf in the Newport and Laguna Beach areas should head for any beaches facing west, which would include Corona del Mar and the beaches between the Newport pier and about 36th Street in Newport Beach.

“The energy from the storm down south is transferred from the wind to the water, and the movement of the water eventually hits here,” Blauer said. “West-facing beaches face more toward Alaska and the Aleutians, and we tend to get heavy surf there only in the winter.

“We’re going to staff as many lifeguard towers as we can; we’re having trouble finding lifeguards since many of them are still in school.”

The summer season does not officially begin until June 22.

Lifeguards at Huntington Beach and San Clemente said swells there would also be high, averaging between 3 and 4 feet. Huntington Beach dispatcher Kim Montgomery advised swimmers to check with the lifeguard nearest them before going in the water at all.

In other weather news, forecasters were calling for a gradual warming trend continuing through the early part of next week.

Relative humidity was expected to stay above 50% almost everywhere, except in the deserts. This was especially good news for firefighters, because an influx of hot, dry air can be a prelude to disaster.

Capt. Gordon Pearson, public information officer for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said this summer promises to be exceptionally hazardous for areas subject to brush fires.

Rainfall thus far in 1985 has been substantially lighter than usual, he said, while the amount of dead brush--including sumac, ceaonthus and manzanita-- has increased substantially since last year, in some cases totaling as much as 40 tons to the acre.

And to top it all, Pearson said, the weather service has issued a prediction of higher temperatures this summer, with humidity levels dropping into the teens.

In addition, the captain said, there has been a high incidence of fires caused by arson.

For 1984, he said, 2,259 of the 2,390 grass and brush fires reported in the county--well over 90%--were officially designated as being of suspicious origin.

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Weekend sailors can expect west to northwest winds to 15 knots with combined seas to 6 feet in outer waters, while those who remain closer to shore can expect light and variable morning winds to shift southwest to west, rising to 18 knots with 1- to 3-foot wind waves in the afternoon from Point Conception to the Mexican border.

Temperatures were expected to reach the upper 70s and lower 80s, with warm and sunny days and clear nights forecast for resort levels in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains.

Sierra visitors were told to look for about the same sky and temperature conditions--with the added feature of westerly winds rising to 20 m.p.h. in the afternoons.

Westerly winds to 35 m.p.h. were also predicted for the deserts, where fair skies were expected to produce afternoon temperatures in the high 90s to 106 degrees in the northern desert, with parts of the southern desert expected to experience highs 10 degrees hotter.

Las Vegas and southern Nevada were told to look for possible thundershowers by Sunday afternoon, with a cooling trend holding temperatures to the upper 90s and below.

San Francisco’s weekend was, as usual, expected to include variable coastal fog and low clouds, but afternoons were expected to have fair skies, with highs from the mid-60s to mid-70s near the coast ranging upward to above 100 degrees in the San Joaquin Valley.