Low-lying areas of the California coast flooded for the second straight day Tuesday, as extreme high tides, compounded by warm ocean temperatures, broke historic records and offered a glimpse of what communities could expect with rising seas.
The ocean has been relatively calm and the flooding has not caused widespread damage.
Residents are more alarmed about what is coming in November and December, when the tide cycles are expected to be even higher and could coincide with significant storms, river flooding and ocean swells.
Roads were submerged in Newport Beach, Huntington Beach and San Diego’s Mission Beach on Monday and Tuesday. On Bay Shore Avenue in Long Beach, residents walked along the bay taking photos of docks higher than the street and leaks gurgling from of the knee-high seawall. Paddleboarders stood above pedestrians a few yards away.
The 3.5-mile long sandspit of the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach has been hit the hardest, with torrents rushing through any spots not protected with sandbags or berms.
Henk Wiessner, president of Fun Zone Boat Company, said water flowed through his office on Monday “like a river,” submerging the boardwalk in 18 inches of water. He said workers came with more sandbags to help hold off most of Tuesday’s high tide but he was forced to remain closed.
He’s worried about what El Niño will bring in December when his tour boat company takes patrons on the water to view the Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade, which draws hundreds of festively lighted boats.
“It’s a big part of our income during the year,” he said. But he remains positive because that’s all he can do. “We’ve been here 30 years. We’ll make it.”
The higher tides are linked to a record El Niño in the Pacific. A warm bulge in the sea surface, caused by a Kelvin wave, recently reached California, raising sea levels by more than a foot from San Diego to San Francisco.
Water levels and high tides on Tuesday reached at least eight feet in some areas on Tuesday morning, breaking records from Santa Barbara to San Diego. On Tuesday, tides in San Pedro near Long Beach reached 8.19 feet, the highest reading since records began in 1923.
Officials expected a similar pattern of midmorning inundation Wednesday before the tides begin to drop on Thursday.
So far this year, NOAA weather stations in Santa Monica and the Port of Los Angeles have seen the most coastal flood days since records began in 1980.
Across much of the stretch from San Diego to Point Conception, water temperatures are more than 5 degrees above average. Warmer water expands, pushing sea levels higher.
“All the homes in areas such as Newport Beach are built around the idea of the highest tides being maybe seven feet,” said Bill Sharp, a longtime Newport Beach resident and big-wave surfing expert. “I think we’re kind of in uncharted terrain here.”
He said it was “human folly” that created the problem.
“It’s just the stuff that we’ve built where maybe it shouldn’t have been built is going to get wrecked sooner or later.”
Officials in Huntington Beach announced that a section of the Pacific Coast Highway closed ahead of Tuesday’s high tide.
Some minor flooding was reported near the Long Beach Peninsula, where large waves brought by Hurricane Rachel in early October pummeled homes and washed away parts of its boardwalk. A sand berm held back the high tides where that damage occurred.
The city is moving quickly to repair the boardwalk and compete a long-awaited dredging project, pumping sand from a nearby harbor channel onto the beach to replenish what has been washed away.
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