Weather Has Experts Holding Their Breath

While oil spill cleanup crews race against time to skim Alaskan crude from the waters off Huntington Beach, teams of scientists are keeping a close watch on the weather--and they’re nervous.

The weather--not human efforts--may be the single biggest factor that determines how much of the 400,000 gallons of the oil reaches the shore.

So far, Nature has been fairly accommodating. But trouble may lie ahead as early as today.

Weather forecasters are calling for the kind of offshore winds that could carry more oil to Orange County beaches.

WeatherData Inc., the private company that provides weather forecasts for The Times, said there will be increasing westerly and southwesterly swells and winds of 10 or 15 knots today and continuing through mid-afternoon Monday between Point Conception and the Mexican border.

“It looks like all the conditions are there to hold the oil near or on the shore,” said WeatherData meteorologist Bill Hibbert. “Once the front passes, winds will shift back to northeasterly on Monday,” he said.

It is information like this that teams of scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are watching closely.

Huddled before computers in “war rooms” located in Long Beach and Seattle, they feed weather data as well as information on tides, currents and wind conditions into computers. Some of the data comes from surveillance flights over the spill.

The computer programs, used to forecast the movement of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska last March, have proven reasonably accurate in predicting which way the spill will head, and how fast it will move, according to Jerry Galt, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“We’re in a period of the year that we’re going to have (onshore winds and weather fronts). It’s just a question of when,” said John Robinson, chief of hazardous materials response with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

If the winds whip up and are sustained for a number of hours, “that will bring most of the oil to shore,” Robinson said.

Where The Spill Is Headed Anaheim Bay-Containment booms stretched across mouth to keep oil out. Santa Ana River-Containment boom. Newport Harbor-Containment boom. Spill site-394,000 gallons, stretching more than 12 miles long and 3.5 miles wide. Beaches from Newport Beach to Huntington Beach shut down. Crews mopped up oil along more than 14 miles of beach front. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration