Seawater pushed over shorelines up and down the coast of California and spilled onto roadways on Monday and Tuesday as high tides reached record levels. Experts said it was a taste of what the state’s residents should expect throughout the winter as the Pacific Ocean swells from this year’s strong El Niño.
Gauges that measure tides along the California coast broke records on Monday, with Los Angeles Harbor recording its highest tide ever and San Francisco seeing its highest tide for the month of October, according to the National Weather Service.
Then it happened again on Tuesday.
In San Francisco, high tides at lunchtime flooded a plaza and parts of the sidewalk along the city’s eastern shore, where its ferries depart throughout the day.
Tony Massara, 72, hopped on a cable car from his home in the Nob Hill neighborhood to take photos of the flooding. “It is a sight to see,” he said.
He snapped one of a giant octopus-like statue in the plaza, its tentacles sitting in pooling water, and wondered aloud whether the octopus was constructed to withstand sea water.
He said he was worried about El Niño’s effects on San Francisco’s infrastructure and subway system, not to mention sea level rise in general threatening the city. He kicked a low concrete barrier that seemed to be holding some flooding back, and noted that it didn’t seem all that effective a sea wall.
The surf flowed in and out through the plaza, passing under fences and over concrete barriers. Office workers picking up salads and lattes at the Ferry Building nearby stopped to stare and snap photos of the flooding, framed by the expansive Bay Bridge stretching over the blue water.
Some were sent scrambling when a ferry departed and pushed even more water toward them, covering the sidewalk and neighboring bike lane.
Tides are tricky to measure because the ocean is never flat or stable, and a single sea-level height doesn’t fully represent what the water is doing. Instead, gauges capture a variety of data points. One of those that meteorologists eye closely is the “mean higher high water,” which is the average height of the higher of the two daily tides observed over many years, and any rise above that is a proxy for how much water inundation occurs on the shore.
In Los Angeles on Tuesday, that number was at a preliminary all-time record of 2.7 feet, meaning there was 2.7 feet of water where there usually isn’t water. In San Francisco, there was 2 feet of inundation at high tide; this did not break the city’s all-time record of 2.82 feet set on Jan. 27, 1983 — also during a very strong El Niño, like this year.
Sea levels are already higher than usual because of El Niño. The unusually high tides this week were driven by a moment of geometric precision in the solar system when the sun, moon and Earth are lined up and the gravitational pull on the oceans is maximized.
Even higher tides are expected in November and December.
Communities along the coast are preparing for widespread flooding, which forecasters warned could be especially devastating if a big storm sweeps the coast at the same time that the tides creep higher.
“What we’re seeing right now is a precursor of the maximum tides expected this winter,” said Karleisa Rogacheski, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Monterey.
In Southern California, Dayleene Davis is searching for a new place to park her food truck on the Long Beach peninsula.
The peninsula is a narrow spit of land that juts into the Pacific Ocean that has felt the fury of El Niño this month. The warm ocean waters fueled more powerful tropical storms and hurricanes in the Pacific, which sent high surf and powerful waves crashing onto homes, alarming residents and scaring away beachgoers.
“It’s pretty crazy,” said Ms. Davis, who cooks smash burgers and French fries for customers.
Ms. Davis said she was trying to secure a new permit to instead park her food truck near the Long Beach port. “I’ll serve a bunch of truck drivers instead of beachgoers. They might actually eat the biscuits and gravy,” she joked.
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