Wintery blast

Alex Coolman

A breath of winter blew through Newport-Mesa on Wednesday, bringing

gusty winds and showers that were, on occasion, rather strong.

The restless weather is part of a much larger system -- one that

stretches all the way from San Diego to Washington state and inland as

far as Colorado, said Miguel Miller, a forecaster with the National

Weather Service.

“It covers pretty much the western third of the United States and

several hundred miles offshore,” he said.

The low-pressure system responsible for the showers is breaking apart

fairly quickly, and should leave the area with sunny skies by this

afternoon.

“Partly cloudy is probably the worst it could get,” Miller said.

At the beach Wednesday, small, dull waves were made worse by the

hacking wind.

Lifeguard Lt. Brent Jacobsen said a 2- to 3-foot swell was dribbling

in on Newport’s beaches, but the conditions were choppy and far from

ideal.

As if lousy surf wasn’t bad enough, county health officials announced

it was likely that storm runoff would elevate bacteria levels at the

beach, possibly reaching levels that would require posting warning

notices.

“We issue the warning as standard practice” after moderately strong

rains, said Monica Mazur, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Health Care

Agency.

In the harbor, the gusty winds proved merciful, said Sgt. Ron Peoples

of the Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol.

“Surprisingly, we had no emergency-type calls,” Peoples said. But the

agency has been issuing small craft warnings since late Tuesday as the

storm rolled into the area.

The one mishap the harbor patrol responded to turned out to be less

serious than it could have been: a sailboat buffeted by the wind broke

one of the lines on its mooring and began to swing around in the water.

But, Peoples said, the direction of the gusts kept it from colliding with

other moored boats.

“We would have had a pretty good boat accident,” had the wind changed

directions, he said.

On the freeways, slick conditions turned out to be unusually

problem-free. A spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol said

traffic on local roads was lighter than usual Wednesday morning.