Monster waves, some as tall as 30 to 50 feet, pounded Northern California's coast on Thursday.
National Weather Service forecaster Brian Garcia explained the so-called bomb cyclone that kicked up winds and dumped rain overnight is generating the high surf.
"All that wind on the backside on that area of the low pressure created all this wave energy, and it’s hitting our coast today, and it’s massive," Garcia said."While we see the rain and the wind slowly start to abate, the impacts of that low pressure aren’t going to be done for another day or so because of that."
Garcia said the wave buoys miles off the shore of Point Reyes all the way down to Monterey were measuring waves up to 23 to 26 feet, at a dominant period of 18 seconds. Those waves grow as they reach shore."What that means, in short, there’s a lot of water moving, with a lot of swell coming through," Garcia said."We’re seeing surf in that 30-to-50-foot range on the coast.
At the tidal gauge at Crissy Field in San Francisco, high tide this morning was predicted to hit 6.8 feet amid typical conditions, but with the storm surge, it rose to 7.7 feet."We’re getting impacts in the bay like it’s a king tide," he said. Mavericks is pumping out waves as high as 30-50 ft. today. At this size, they actually register on the Richter scale.
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