High tides inundated Southern California communities with water Monday, flooding streets from Newport Beach to Long Beach, as the region braced for days of coastal flooding from near or record sea levels this week.
As high tide reached its peak Monday morning, water rose from Newport Harbor onto the streets of the Balboa Peninsula, flooding some businesses in the Balboa Fun Zone. In Long Beach, residents reported flooding along Bayshore Beach, Naples and the Peninsula.
Officials in both cities have been scrambling to prepare for the tides in recent days, with crews moving sand to shore up beaches, installing sandbags and working to protect areas that have been hammered in recent months. Over the weekend, authorities urged residents in flood-prone areas “to take precautions now,” including moving cars to higher ground and protecting their properties with sandbags.
On Monday, crews in Newport Beach were working to pump out knee-deep water and reinforce sandbags along the Peninsula Harbor. Despite the high tide, authorities received no reports of significant and widespread damage.
Georgia Rios, a spokeswoman for the city of Newport Beach, said the community has heeded the city’s messages to prepare this week.
“We saw about 25,000 sandbags leave this weekend,” she said. “We’ve really seen the community come out, so I think a lot of the success of not having huge flood damage is due to residents getting involved and getting the sandbags for their homes.”
In at least one location in Southern California, the tide was high enough to break a record.
The San Pedro tide gauge reached 8.02 feet Monday morning, breaking the previous record of 7.93 feet set in January 2005. Water levels were also unusually high in San Diego County.
In La Jolla, officials recorded sea level at 7.75 feet. “It’s very close to the station record, which is 7.81 feet,” said Chandler Price, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. “At this rate, given we’re expecting higher tides tomorrow, we could break them.”
La Jolla’s record was set on Nov. 25, 2015, during the last “very strong” El Niño, according to the weather service. On Sunday, the sea water level reached 7.66 feet.
The National Weather Service warned that even higher levels are expected on Tuesday.
The areas most at risk for coastal flooding this week are Orange and San Diego counties, where the National Weather Service has issued a coastal flood warning that will last until Thursday afternoon.
“Significant coastal flooding is expected,” the weather service said. “Low-lying properties, including homes, businesses and some critical infrastructure, will be flooded. Some riverbank erosion will occur through the morning.”
Farther north, in Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, a coastal flood advisory has been issued and “isolated damage to structures from saltwater flooding is possible in the most vulnerable areas.”
A rare combination of threats brought devastating waves to the Southern California coastline: El Niño fueling an active hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific; a sea heatwave; and an astronomical alignment that only occurs once every 20 years.
This week, total water levels in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties could reach more than 8 feet above the baseline, defined as the lowest average daily water level observed between 1983 and 2001.
The record for highest sea water level in the Port of Los Angeles is 7.92 feet, recorded on January 10, 2005, during a weak El Niño. Projected seawater levels in the harbor could reach 8.1 feet Tuesday and 8 feet Wednesday, the Oxnard weather service office said. On Sunday, sea water levels reached a preliminary level of 7.71 feet.
In Newport Beach on Sunday, seawater had already reached a height of 8 feet, city officials said. On Monday, it reached 8.3 feet, almost 2 feet higher than would be expected from high tide alone. Potential seawater levels on the city’s shoreline could reach 8.5 feet Tuesday at 9:50 a.m. and Wednesday at 10:28 a.m.
Record seawater temperatures off California are causing seawater levels to be 1.25 to 1.8 feet higher than they would be due to the simple movement of the Moon, Earth and Sun, scientists say. Ocean temperatures have been affected not only by human-caused climate change, but also by an El Niño-fueled Kelvin wave and a months-old marine heatwave unrelated to El Niño.
A reading of the seawater surface temperature at Scripps Pier in La Jolla, a neighborhood of San Diego, reached a high point for the year of about 77 degrees in early August; the average high is about 70. On Thursday, the surface temperature there was about 73, well above the average of 66 for this time of year.
Scientists warn that coastal flooding is expected to get worse this year and next. Even higher tides are expected during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Martin Luther King Jr. holidays — the so-called king tides that Californians expect every year.
However, these king tides will be exceptionally extreme, producing some of the highest tides, because we are near the peaks of what are called the 18.6-year lunar node tidal cycle and the 4.4-year lunar perigee tidal cycle, which result from small changes in the moon’s orbit and affect tide-generating forces, according to Reinhard Flick, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
If large storms occur during these king tide events around Thanksgiving, Christmas and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, they will further increase the risk of coastal flooding, scientists warn.
Gn usa
