COUNTYWIDE : Waves of Surfers Hit the Beaches

With towering, eight-foot waves crashing thunderously in front of him and a light ocean breeze taming the bright Wednesday morning sun, Chris Bushhousen couldn’t help but smile when thinking about the weather back home in Germany.

Here was Bushhousen on the second day of fall, living a classic California postcard vacation as he took in the rays and watched his daughters splashing near Newport Pier. Over in Frankfurt, meanwhile, the forecast called for chilly temperatures and cloudy skies.

“It’s getting cold in Frankfurt. This extends my summer,” said Bushhousen, an Orange County native who works as a salesman in the German city. “It’s not too hot, but a lot nicer than what we’re experiencing back home.”

Bushhousen wasn’t the only one enjoying the prime beach conditions Wednesday.

An estimated 300 surfers, small white dots clinging to dark blue waves in the distance, hit the shores around Newport Beach in what lifeguards said was an unusually busy autumn weekday. Lifeguards in Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach also reported slightly larger crowds than normal, though the surf in those areas ranged only from two to four feet.

The six- to eight-foot surf first appeared last weekend and is likely to continue until Friday, lifeguards and a weather forecaster said.

The surf is being generated by a trio of fierce Pacific storms and hurricanes brewing more than 1,000 miles to the south. Hurricane Seymour, the most significant of the weather systems, packed 75-m.p.h. winds, creating larger-than-average waves for Orange County’s south-facing beaches, said Rick Dittmann of at WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

The accompanying heat sent the mercury soaring to 101 degrees in Anaheim and 99 in Santa Ana and San Juan Capistrano. Newport Beach had a relatively comfortable high of 79 degrees. The sweltering weather, caused by high pressure, is expected to end today, when temperatures should drop 10 to 15 degrees, Dittmann said.

For beach-goers, Wednesday was probably the last time for a while to experience both excellent waves and rays--a combination most surfers agreed was splendid.

“This is a great day for surfing. The waves are good. The conditions are perfect,” said Gene Grover, 18, of Newport Beach, a coast regular who said that, when not in the water, he enjoys riding his bike so that he can “check out the babes or watch the bro’s surf.”

“I’d give them a seven or eight on a scale of 10,” Jason Hall, 21, of Newport Beach said of the waves, as he completed his stretches before hitting the water with his surfboard. “I think it was a little better a couple of weeks ago.”