COUNTYWIDE : Crowds in the Swim as Summer Arrives

Summer officially arrived Tuesday with temperatures in the low 70s, clear skies and light breezes, luring crowds to county beaches and to inland swimming pools.

“It’s phenomenal, it’s summer,” said Lt. Eric Bauer of the Newport Beach lifeguards.

“As always, our crowds are predicated on weather,” he said. And the combination of warm temperature and summer vacation for many students resulted in “very, very crowded conditions” at Newport Beach.

“They’ve been pent up in a classroom all year, and they’re ready to come to the beach,” said Bauer, who noted that the city brought in extra lifeguards to handle the unexpectedly large crowds. Full staffing of the lifeguard towers is scheduled to begin Saturday.

As for water conditions on the first day of summer, Bauer reported “some pretty good-sized surf” of three to five feet.

“We’ve had quite a few rip currents pulling and quite a few rescues,” said Bauer.

At Huntington Beach, Alanna Quignon and Erin Spaseff were sunning themselves on a grassy knoll just north of the pier. The 15-year-olds attend Valley Christian High School in Cerritos.

“Finals are over, we are so happy,” said Spaseff, a Lakewood resident. “We’re just trying to work on our tans.”

Quignon added that “this is our third time (at the beach) this week.”

A short distance from the high school students, Huntington Beach lifeguard Jeff Flanagan was watching the water from his perch at Tower 6. He characterized the crowd as large for a Tuesday, with a mixture of visitors and locals.

Most people seemed content to stretch out on the sand and enjoy the afternoon sun. But some of those who ventured into the water had the misfortune of stepping into holes created by strong wave action.

“People kind of float on by and get caught in holes,” said Flanagan, a 20-year-old student at Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

People also took to the water in inland cities. In Brea, for example, the city plunge was crowded “with all kinds of people,” said cashier Manuel Viola, who estimated that 50 adults and 200 children took a dip Tuesday.

The historic structure, built in the late 1920s, opened for the season Monday.

Meanwhile, UC Irvine’s Dr. Virginia Trimble, a physics professor, offered a scientific explanation of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.

“ ‘Solstice’ means ‘sun stands still,’ which is silly, of course, because the sun doesn’t stand still,” Trimble said. Actually, the sun “climbs” to its highest point in the sky on June 21, which marks the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.

But for people living in the Southern Hemisphere, June 21 is the shortest day of the year and the official start of winter.