How Powerful Waves Can Completely Transform a Beach

And there it is. It's the fullest I've ever seen it. County parks permitted us to break the biggest creek there's ever been. Oh, oh, crazy going. Oh, I'm out of that thing. Check out my tripod. We've got an air fryer on top of a stool, on top of a thing, all for you guys. We're doing it. Today, I get to talk about a topic that I'm super passionate about, which is beach morphology, sediment transfer, and a little bit of meteorology. And the reason I'm talking about that is because at the beginning of September, we had a pretty crazy swell event that changed our beaches like I've never seen before. There was so much sand moving in the course of one day, that there's part of the beaches that completely disappeared. And there's nothing but boulders and rocks and other parts of beaches that had more sand on it than I've ever seen. So I'm going to break down why that happened and why it was such a significant event for people in Southern California and especially skin borders in South Laguna. The story begins with Hurricane K. Hurricane K was a Category 3 hurricane when it hit central Baja. And after that, it continued to track up the coast and make its way into the Southern California swell window. We're going to pull up a cool little map of where the hurricane started and how it tracked up our coast day after day and ended up in our swell window. Here we go. So on September 6th, we have a Category 1 hurricane spinning off the tip of Baja. It is the day after the big Labor Day weekend. There's plenty of parking here in the Aliso Beach parking lot. The tide is going to be super high. About 6 p.m. tonight, we have a rising swell and there's already water filling the parking lot and it's only 3.30. So I'm going to kind of show you what happens when we get a high tide with a big swell or a rising swell. It's pretty impressive what it does to the coastline and how much sand that moves around. We're going to go show you what it looks like as the tide starts to rise here. There's hardly any beach left down here. Wow. All this water that's draining into the storm drains over here actually just goes straight into the creek over here. Fire sunset. Pretty crazy looking. Oh yes. There's a lot of water going down into the drain there. Sand everywhere. Oh! Wow. Yeah! And on September 7th, it's a Category 2 hurricane with a max sustained wind of 105 miles per hour. For those of you who don't know, wind equals waves. And at this point, southern Baja is getting absolutely pitted. All jokes aside, Baja had waves measuring up to 30 feet and this caused some serious damage in certain coastal areas. On September 8th, Hurricane K made landfall in Baja but continued to track in the northwest direction towards California. And this is when things get interesting for surf in southern California. On September 9th, the storm is now a tropical depression with winds between 40 to 50 miles per hour and it enters our swell window. In high anticipation of the storm and the waves that it was going to generate, I went down to Aliso Beach at approximately 845 and what I witnessed that evening was something I've never seen the ocean do in my entire life. So when I first got there, if I was lucky, I'd see a wave break on the shore every 15 to 20 minutes and it was a good sized wave. It would wash up and the high tide was already making some of the waves wash up into the parking lot. But as the night progressed, we saw this tropical storm swell fill in and it went from wave every 15 minutes to 6 to 8 foot waves every 5 to 10 seconds breaking on the shore and flooding the parking lot. So pretty phenomenal stuff. At this point, I was running around the Aliso parking lot, losing my mind. I had never seen so much water being dumped into the parking lot bringing so much sand with it. The angle of the swell was so unique because it was approaching from such a steep angle from the south. So it was excavating sand from the south end of the beach and bringing it north or bringing it into the parking lot. The nail in the coffin for the beach at Aliso was that the swell had perfectly coincided with a 6.5 foot high tide at 9.05 pm. We were watching an event that was changing our beaches forever right in front of our eyes. Look at how far back. There's cones and water in the middle of the parking lot. Oh my god. See how it's like one wave after another. We just watched the hurricane swell go. There's like a sand cliff now. Like literally an hour ago. We're losing more beaches right here. Fire pit. This one might really get us. The trash cans. Oh my gosh. Almost knee deep. I am. How much water is right there? That's insane. It is. It's the fullest I've ever seen it. Hands down. It's crazy. Fullest I've seen it. Larry's freaking out. Says he's never seen it that full and he's got a couple years on me. I have a historical creek fill here. I don't think I've ever seen water get that close to the playground here. The tunnel is the fullest I've ever seen it. That is insane. That's that sand berm is really really high. I think the the tropical storm and that swell with the high tide built that sand berm up higher than it's ever been making this thing clog up and fill up higher than it's ever been as well. So I'm gonna get swamped foot probably. Oh my gosh. I'm almost knee deep. Oh wow. Halfway through the tunnel. That's insane. County parks permitted us to break the biggest creek there's ever been. That's an honor. The creek's so full it's actually coming back up the storm drains into the parking lot. That's a that's a first. All right guys we are here at Aliso Creek and this is historical. Blair what do you think of this? Pretty wild. We have a county park straight through digging it. He needs he needs a little help. This is the fullest I've ever seen this thing. It's flooding the pedestrian tunnel. It's hard for people to get through and over to the beach. This is the fullest fullest I've ever seen it. Are you claiming historical? Historical creek fill and dig right now. It's all happened. So all we gotta do is get a little stream going and gravity and erosion will do all the rest. Wow I have never seen that much water in there. We've been around for a little longer than me so that's saying a lot I think. Yeah. Oh oh crazy going nuts. Yeah that's a big one. Holy bye-bye. Oh my god. That was so fast. It went like that. That's the fastest I've ever seen it. I could barely go home. Uh-oh it's about to get rideable. Content we're doing it. It's all happening. Go Blair. You out there? Hi Tex. How are you? Going in? That's a 10. Climb the mountain. That thing is messed up. We're so scared. That's about the cutest thing I've ever seen. Oh. Weight room. Put your back into it. Weight room. It's good for your shoulder. Super good. I'm sending that to his physical therapist. Oh my come out of that thing. Wow. Dang. That was a sick one. Give it a test out. Fresh Goldberg babe. Good work. I think they're super soft. Very comfortable. All right. Yeah how about it? See this wall. These pilings with the rebar coming out of it. It's all part of the old pier that was here before. And then there's more here. That was still attached yesterday. It fell in overnight I guess. Pier pilings. I think in my entire life. That's like the same structure and everything that the old pier pilings were. So I don't know. It's kind of in good condition considering. It kind of makes you wonder how many of them there are out. Oh yeah. If it's going to like a calm day when we can go snorkel. That would be sick. Might be kind of crazy. That's actually a really good idea. If it ever gets that small again. Yeah right. More sidewalk fell in. Oh wow. All of the sidewalk fell in. And the piping that goes to the shower. This was the splash zone like a month ago. We're in the splash zone right here. So we are back down at Aliso. About a month and a half after Hurricane K. And we are sitting on this Aliso pier wall. Which is already almost under sand again. So the beach has transformed a ton since Hurricane K. And obviously the sand's coming back. Thanks to the winter north swells. I think this beach will always kind of see the effects from the hurricane. You can tell there's some erosion still. I think it moved rocks kind of permanently. So there's some boulders and rocks out in the lineup that you got to be cautious of still. For the most part I think we're gonna get our beach back. And it might look a little bit different than it has in the past. But there'll be more skim days to be had. Yeah so that is gonna be permanently changed. We have no more shower down here anymore. And we lost a couple parking spots. The little sidewalk tiles. Yeah the beach is definitely quite a bit different after Hurricane K. And it's gonna take some time for it to repair itself. We're getting there. So when all of the sand disappeared from here it moved to different parts of the beach. And to places where I've never seen so much sand. So the cave where Sammy and I were skimming. That very rarely ever fills up with sand. And even just down to the north end of this beach there was more sand. And that's kind of where it all piled up and stacked up. So it's got to work its way back eventually.