Swimming, Area Coastal Waters Heating Up

The chill is gone.

Surfers and swimmers are dipping into unseasonably warm water these days, as weather conditions have conspired to make the waters off Southern California almost balmy.

“You can get away with just wearing trunks,” said 18-year-old Jeff Smith still dripping wet after an afternoon surf session with a friend at the mouth of the Santa Clara river. “It seems really early for it to be this warm. You usually don’t see it like this until late in the summer.”

Lifeguards at San Buenaventura State Beach said the warmer water is also bringing more people to the coast.

“More people are coming to the beach and they are staying in the water a lot longer,” said lifeguard C.L. Price, 41.

Although the higher temperatures make it easier to jump in for a swim, Price said that with more people at the beach the guards have had to respond to more emergencies, most recently a drowning at County Line Beach last week.

“You still have to be careful out there,” he said.

Officials are attributing the warmer ocean all along the Southern California coastline to lack of high winds and storms.

“The lack of northwest winds . . . which causes upwelling of cooler water, has meant that sea surface temperatures have risen,” said Mike Wofford, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Over the last three weeks temperatures are at least two degrees higher in the Ventura area and significantly higher--up to 10 degrees higher--at other monitoring spots from Malibu to San Diego, Wofford said.

Temperature readings at the Ventura Harbor are only slightly higher than normal, between 64 degrees and 66 degrees. Local swimmers and surfers said that with the hot sunny days the air seems much warmer.

“Our guards are trunking it in the water for an hour at a time and that’s unusual even in the summer,” said Carrie Whitman, a 13-year veteran lifeguard, who also takes temperature readings at the end of the Ventura Pier.

At the mouth of the Santa Barbara Channel, the water was a warm 66 degrees--unusual for an area that is so exposed to the open ocean, according to readings by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

Whitman said she often sees fluctuations in temperatures and expects that the water could cool down just as quickly as it warmed up.

The warmer water has driven the salmon--and much of the local commercial salmon fishing fleet--north, said fisherman Tom Roff.

Although officials from the weather service and the oceanic administration are attributing the higher temperatures to weather conditions, one local meteorologist said it may be more complicated than that.

“For right now that’s all supposition,” said Rea Strange, a meteorologist who has run Pacific Weather Analysis out of his Montecito home for more than 30 years.

Although the weather has been exceptionally sunny and warm, there has been plenty of wind, said Strange, who forecasts for oil companies and others.

“We have had a lot of nice weather, but we have had a lot of nice Aprils in the past where we would also continue to have cold water,” said Strange, who swims every day in the ocean without a wetsuit.

“Some days it takes a real heroic effort to get in, but lately it’s downright balmy.”

* BEACH SCENE

Southland warming trend. A1