Nice weather for a swim

WEATHER TIDBITS

The ocean temps on July 9 made it all the way up to the 72-degree

mark. There’s a lot of happy people out there in the water.

Get out there before the westerlies show up again.

Just got off the phone with Sly Dawg’s uncle -- Richard Chew, one

of the head honchos for the San Clemente lifeguards and he’s telling

me it’s 74 degrees right at the pier -- thus making this the warmest

water since October of ’97.

Last summer on several occasions it climbed to the 70- or

71-degree mark. Same with 2000. Then the westerlies would return with

a vengeance -- then three days later we’d be right back at square one

-- 64 degrees.

Then of course there was the cold water year -- 1999, when Senora

La Nina was running the show, fresh on the heels of her counterpart

Senor El Nino.

The 70-degree mark was never reached the entire summer, in fact

only twice did it even make it to 68!

The whole summer racked up a meager total of five days with

head-high surf, with not even one day of any kind of bump from

Mexican-born storms. And with Miss La Nina supervising things and she

was every bit as intense as her brother, Senor El Nino who took up

residence from spring ’97 to summer ’98.

Senor El Nino is a very generous man. He gave us 195 consecutive

days of 70 degree or warmer water -- she gave us none.

Senor El Nino made it possible for Marlin to follow his wonderful

warm water all the way up to the San Francisco Bay.

All she did was make all kinds of fish confused and cold and

uncatchable.

Mr. Nino built a whole fleet of category four and five hurricanes

and sent them on a northwest path right into our surf window.

All she did was supply a hand full of small tropical storms that

all formed in the wrong places that moved the wrong direction.

She wasn’t much kinder to the Southern Hemisphere -- only a couple

of head-high two or three day bumps.

He gave us more than 3 feet of rain, she doled out a measly 9

inches.

But just like everything else in life, there’s the good, the bad

and the ugly.

Many people lost their homes from flooding and landslides and two

Laguna people’s lives were snatched from them as a result of Mr. El

Nino’s ugly and sometimes violent nature.

While under Senora La Nina summer tans might have suffered, but no

loved ones did. And the sun always comes back eventually.

* DENNIS McTIGHE is a Laguna Beach resident. He earned a

bachelor’s in earth sciences from UCSD and was a U.S. Air Force

weather forecaster at Hickman Air Force Base, Hawaii.