Heavy Surf

There’s a storm coming this weekend, our second big El Niño storm in SoCal. This time, one of the warnings that they’re repeating over and over is about some huge waves hitting the coast, further eroding the beaches, and in some cases the cliffs along the coasts. Many of these beaches and cliffs have very expensive houses and apartments and condos on them, so it’s not just news, it’s big news.

(For those of you not in SoCal, you’re not necessarily spared – this storm will head across the country toward the East Coast and pretty much repeat the blizzard of last week. If you’re in its path, stock up on milk and bread now! Or beer and Captain Crunch, whatever floats your boat.)

Anyway, all of the television stations of course have their fancy, high definition maps to tell us where the danger will be:

Image: KABC Television, Los Angeles

What’s wrong with this picture?

If it were ME making this graphic, I would have that lovely fuchsia band hugging the coastline a bit more. If you’re familiar with the Los Angeles region, you’ll see that their map has a High Surf Advisory all the way inland as far as Interstate 5. That means that places like downtown LA, Dodger Stadium, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills are all in danger of high surf, right?

Let me tell you, if the surf’s so bad that it’s going to be dangerous at Dodger Stadium (17 miles from the coast and at an elevation of 267 feet), they need to be evacuating twenty million people from Southern California, not showing us pretty, pink maps!

Oxnard in Ventura County? Ditto. The CAF hangar in Camarillo is just above our weather woman’s left wrist, but about five miles from the coast. I hope I don’t need my water wings this weekend. But they’re showing the warning area to go all the way back inland into the Ojai Valley and up into the mountains by Santa Paula and Fillmore.

Someone needs to go back to coloring school and learn to color closer to the lines!