Spring kicks off with surf from every which way, from Puerto ...
Meanwhile, a few thousand miles south, Puerto Escondido was also seeing too much of a good thing -- closing out, washing through and sectioning off with all ...
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April 4, 2012

Spring kicks off with surf from every which way, from Puerto Escondido to Ghost Tree and beyond

Update: Click here for the photo and video slideshow

Springtime in California is many things to many people. Mark Renneker, Mav's paddle purist, once was quoted as saying, "I hate poppies," and he's not alone. Non-surfers gaze upon beautiful hillsides speckled with California's state flower and see signs of hope and renewal. But NorCal waveriders see the onset of howling NW winds, mottled green, freezing cold water and weeks on end of marginal swells.

This spring started off a bit different. The biggest NW swell of the year decided to hit on April Fool's Day, for starters. (No foolin'.) And not to be outdone, the Southern Hemisphere kicked out a very large SW swell at the same time.

Now here's the thing: we've been doing swell stories for years over here at Surfline. But we've never done one which includes both maxing Ghost Tree and maxing Puerto from the same weekend. (Neither were epic, to be fair, but both were very solid with few takers.)

Surfline's Hellman of the Swell Award goes to Monterey lifeguard Paul Wetterau, who solo-missioned blustery 40-foot (50-foot?) Ghost Tree during the peak of the NW swell on Sunday morning.

"The night before, I saw that buoy 59 was 32 feet at 17 seconds, so I knew it was going to be big," Wetterau explained. "I paddled out around 8:30 on my 10'6" and played cat and mouse for a while, mainly spectating. I was sitting a bit wider than normal. I had called all my friends, but no one was game."

Wetterau has surfed out here a dozen times over the past few years, but Sunday was the biggest -- and windiest -- he'd seen since December 2007. "Sunday was a memorable day," he continued. "I caught like six waves or so; really only two that were legit. There was one that stood out and it was huge -- and even then, I wasn't where I wanted to be. It's hard to get into the bowl at that size, with that amount of wind, you're kinda on the corner."

Meanwhile, a few thousand miles south, Puerto Escondido was also seeing too much of a good thing -- closing out, washing through and sectioning off with all that long-period SW energy. "It came on pretty strong," explained local Coco Nogales, who was the only one to catch anything at the peak of the swell. "The waves were solid but with a lot of current -- not very clean, and lots of closeouts, so I decided to grab the rope and whip in."

Those are the extremes. Smack in the middle -- as in straight out front of the Surfline offices and the rest of Orange County -- the two swells combined to create a few days of a-frame city.

"It's been like Groundhog Day," local pro Teddy Navarro frothed when we called him Wednesday afternoon. "I keep trying to stop, but I wake up and the waves are good again! Gotta take advantage of the swell while it's here; everything's falling apart other than surfing, but I'm gonna keep going till this thing shuts down."

Surfline forecaster Jon Warren explains the science behind the swell: "The first significant development was a strong early season storm that slowly tracked across the central South Pacific over March 22nd-26th, which had a fetch aimed well at California and Mexico (ie. a more south to north aimed fetch, rather than west to east). So, just as this good pulse of SSW swell started to build into CA on Friday the 30th (already lighting up Mexico with solid surf), the North Pacific didn't want to retire just yet for the season and decided to quickly whip up an intense late season storm within close proximity to the California coast on Friday the 30th.

"As a result, a newly developed and large/consistent westerly swell slammed the Golden State on the weekend of the 31st-1st, just as the SSW swell moved in. This North Hemi pulse (with a WNW-NW angle) swept down the coast of Baja shortly after, and even down to the exposures along the north-central coast of Mainland Mexico (peaking for MM today, Wednesday the 4th)."

It wasn't an all-state shackfest, however. "Conditions for California over the weekend were variable, as the storm system that pushed out the west swell moved into the coast with clocking winds and rain," continued Warren. "However, if you knew where to look, there were some locations that offered good conditions. Then everywhere cleaned up on Monday and into Tuesday as high pressure resided over the region and light winds prevailed."