Stormy day in history

DENNIS McTIGHE

Sept. 25 is a significant day in Orange County, especially along the

coast.

It marks the only time that a hurricane from the Eastern Pacific

tropics found its way up to Southern California making its landfall

near Point Fermin just above San Pedro. It’s the only one of its

kind, as far as anybody knows since, I guess, people first showed up

in Orange County and recorded stuff like that.

The year was 1939, the 25th, a Sunday morning when all hell broke

loose.

For starters, the pier that went out past Bird Rock, built way

back in 1915 was reduced to meager match sticks in just four hours.

And there were the “Biblical” rains: 7.75 inches in 24 hours,

second now to the Dec. 6 and 7, 1997 24-hour total of 8.08 inches.

There was also the surf: 20- to 25-foot storm waves that Sunday

morning. Most importantly, the winds, once gusting to 82 mph with

sustained winds at 73 mph.

Together the demolition team of waves and wind completely

dismantled a structure that had withstood many storms, I’m sure,

since its inception 24 years prior.

But this one sneaked in from the south and made its way farther

north than any of it’s predecessors and nobody’s come close since

then. Linda in 1997 got as far as 200 miles west of Pescadero on

Southern Baja’s western side, about 40 miles up from Cabo. But then

she turned abruptly west with her record 225 mph gusts. So she was

only 810 miles south of Laguna on Sept. 15, 1997, prompting an actual

hurricane watch for Southern California’s entire coast line.

I mean she was still a fat Category 5 before she veered nearly 90

degrees to the left and far out into open ocean. The ocean

temperature here in Laguna on that day was 76 degrees, compliments of

one of the top three El Nino’s of the 20th Century. The other two

heavyweights were ’39 and ’83.

Hurricanes need at least 80 degree surface ocean temps to keep

them fueled and maintain their hurricane status.

But the 76 degrees on Sept. 15 would have been enough fuel to keep

the feisty Linda from totally breaking apart had she maintained her

north / northwest course.

But the water was even warmer than that in ’39 -- check this out

folks, it was 80 degrees all the way up to Point Conception! The

whole week of Sept. 18 to 25. Bingo! The ideal temperature to keep

this pinwheeler armed and dangerous!

That week leading up to the historical date was probably the most

radical week anybody’s ever seen since well, since people got here

whenever that was.

The heaviest heat wave ever seen here on the coast began to

shatter records exactly one week before the storm’s arrival on Sept.

18, it hit 101 degrees in Laguna, on the 19th it went to 105 degrees

and then on the 20th it made it to an unofficial 108 degrees at

waters edge. The water was 81 degrees and inland at Santa Ana 119

degrees was officially recorded. The surf by the 22nd was already

marching in. Can you imagine how epic it must have been on the 22nd?

Super hot, offshore winds or total glass, 105 degrees on the beach

and 81 degrees in the water and Brooks Street going off like no other

day before or after.

OK, picture the big Tahiti southern-hemi macker we got on July 24,

1996. OK, now double that day and that’s probably how it was. Maybe

20 people in the world surfed Malibu in 1939.

I guess Bob Simmons, a young Matt Kivlin and Tom Blake were there

at Malibu the Sunday morning the hurricane blew in.

Early in the day, hours before the storm really hit, it was dead

calm glass, the sky was an eerie greenish black and the air was so

still you could light a match and it would still burn uncupped by

human hands.

They figured it to be 18 to 20 feet and I trust their judgment

100% on that one because they were all top notch wave riders of that

period entering the ‘40s.

The barometer was an all-time high on the 20th -- it reached 30.41

inches then only five days later it plunged to a record (still a

record) 29.21 inches.

I wish I had a time machine, I’d be sitting at Malibu watching the

first scouts marching in on the 22nd, and then go check myself into a

mental hospital on the 26th!

Stay tuned.

* DENNIS McTIGHE is a Laguna Beach resident. He earned a

bachelor’s in earth sciences from UCSD and was a U.S. Air Force

weather forecaster at Hickman Air Force Base, Hawaii.