meteorology

Why does it seem like the west coasts of the seven continents have bigger and more consistent surf than the east coasts?
asked by Mike Kassak

Answer

Surfline's very own tag team of Adam Wright and Marcus Sanders take a stab at it:

Well, Mike, you're pretty right on: west coasts do get better surf than east coasts, the world over. By "better" we mean west coasts are given to long-interval groomed groundswells over reefs, rather than scrappy, short-interval windswells.

And no, it's not just luck. It's actually pretty simple. In order to get serious groundswell -- that is, a swell with an interval of more than say, 14 seconds between wave crests, which can translate to corduroy-like lines and pinwheeling spokes along a pointbreaks such as Rincon -- you need a large area of water for wind to blow across for an extended period of time. This is called fetch, and along with wind duration and wind speed, it's one Sean Collins' three Golden Rules of surf creation:

"Wave generation requires three variables: wind velocity, wind duration and wind fetch. The harder the wind blows, the longer the time it blows and the greater the distance it blows, the bigger the waves. Limitation of any one of these variables will severely restrict the development of wave heights and the transfer of energy into the water."

OK, so you need a bunch of water for wind to blow across. Big deal. How can France see 12-foot grinding Guethary -- with 10 wave sets, evenly spaced out -- while New Jersey is shoulder-high and breaking all over the place? Same ocean, right? Well, yeah, but here's the kicker: due to the fact that the earth is spinning (duh), almost every single significant frontal storm, in both hemispheres, tracks from west to east.

Why do west coasts get better surf | Surfline | Who the F&*K Knows

New Jersey's Black Clouds (formerly The Golden Dawn from 2004-2005) play bracing hard rock with soaring melodies and dynamic arrangements. Hard, loud and impossibly catchy, the band has won a loyal following by lighting up clubs in New York and New Jersey since their genesis in the Spring of 2004. They have also played in Las Vegas, as well as Canada.

The Black Clouds feature chief songwriter and producer Dan Matthews on lead guitar and vocals. Marcelino Garcia plays rhythm guitar, Chris Conner plays bass guitar and Gregg LoCascio fills out the quartet playing drums and providing backing vocals.

With a self-financed, produced and recorded album released in January of 2008, mixed and mastered in Seattle by Jack Endino, The Black Clouds have high expectations for the year. Jack Endino is best known for his work with Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney.

Please vote if you like them

A black bear is being sought by New Jersey police on suspicion of stealing a minivan.

A Worrisome Precedent

In Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York, in Montgomery and Baltimore Counties in Maryland, in Bergen and Essex and Middlesex Counties in New Jersey, in almost every mature suburb in the northeast and Midwest and mid south, families face these same conditions. A Roman Catholic pastor I met in Nassau County described it as suburbia’s midlife crisis. It may be part of America’s midlife crisis as well.

No longer young, no longer trendy, no longer the place to be, no longer without apparent limitations or constraints, these places, like people, have developed ways of avoiding reality.

Urban decline moves to the suburbs

Majestic Jacobean style English castle with over 45,000 sq ft of home on 12.3 acres of beautifully landscaped property. Outstanding master carvings and stone work throughout the home. Eleven various stone and woodcarved fireplaces. Totally renovated exterior and interior with all new mechanicals including central air.

13 bedrooms, 8.3 bathrooms. Now, if only it wasn't in Jersey...oh, and not $11,000,000. :-)

-janelane

my next house :-)

Now that the nominating process is up, I wanted to record my expectations for the general election (mostly so I can point and go "SEE!").

If we get Obama-McCain:
Obama gets the usual democratic areas, New England (maybe dropping like New Hampshire or Vermont, someone up there always seems to go against the grain for some reason) and the left coast. He also gets all the states that stayed in the Union in 1861, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky or Missouri could flip, but the rest are solid blue, and taking three out of four of those states would not surprise me. He also picks up 2-3 from the normally red south, Florida, Georgia, a Carolina, Louisiana? Finally out west, he might get one or two, but enh. Final count in the electoral college 330-210 or bigger. 350 is easily in reach. Obama wins.

If we get Clinton-McCain:
Clinton gets New England, like Obama, and the left coast. Now things change. Clinton still gets New York and Jersey, but the midwest splits. She loses Missouri and the entire south and west. Final result, 2004 all over again with the winner up in the air. The difference will be close enough that flipping any of Pennsylvania, Ohio or Indiana from the winner to the loser would change the winner. Count in the college, 287-273.

Now, toss a huge event out there (someone nukes a port, W bombs Iran, Black Thursday) and I think things slope even harder to the Democrats side (8 years of you guys and this is the protection you do? F-Off!). McCain needs a Hillary nomination or the second coming.

Feel free to make other predictions!

For many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Back in the day, I was in Jersey. I don't know if it was the center of the BBS world; it was probably the ass-end of it, like it was of everything else. But it felt like the center.

Social networks conceal a trivialization of interaction ... at a time when we need discussion and argument to be more effective than ever.

Call it stalking, procrastinating or friend collecting, it doesn't build real connections.

... Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs.

What was once the mark of utter uncoolness, a veritable byword of selling out, has become the norm.

What the company is trying to do is prevent the passengers who can pay the second-class fare from traveling third class; it hits the poor, not because it wants to hurt them, but to frighten the rich ... And it is again for the same reason that the companies, having proved almost cruel to the third-class passengers and mean to the second-class ones, become lavish in dealing with first-class customers. Having refused the poor what is necessary, they give the rich what is superfluous.

If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

It's the best kind of pop album imaginable.

Rick Rubin says that the future of the industry is a subscription model.

Gray matter is the new black of the hip social scene.

Cable news has a habit of treating viewers like children on a long car trip.

Joseph Gellings, WB9WOL, a longtime electrical engineer for Bell Laboratories who helped develop microwave communications and lay the first transatlantic telephone cable to Europe, passed away November 29 due to heart complications; he was 89. According to relatives, Gellings acquired a ham radio in his early teens. "His parents needed to coerce him into going to bed, because he'd stay up all night communicating with people from around the world," daughter Ginny Cooney recalled. It was his passion for ham radio that later sparked an interest in electronics, she said. Gellings attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He later received a master's degree in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University in Columbus. In 1944, Gellings began working for Bell Labs in Summit, New Jersey, where he initially helped develop microwave communication systems for use during World War II. "That technology aided both land-to-land and air-to-land communications within the military," said his son, Joe, also an electrical engineer. In 1955, Gellings was assigned by Bell Labs to oversee the laying of the first underwater transatlantic telephone cable, from Newfoundland to Scotland. That cable, nearly 3 inches wide at various points with about seven layers of insulation, was in use for 22 years, before being retired in 1978, Cooney said. In 1966, Gellings moved with his family to Oswego, Illinois after being transferred by Bell Labs to its Naperville offices. There, he participated in the development of solid-state digital switching for telephone calls, before retiring in 1976. Gellings is survived by two children, Joseph of Shawano, Wisconsin and Ginny Cooney of Wheaton, Illinois; seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Joseph Gellings Dies...

In the Army's vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game. The Army has a name for this vision: Future Combat Systems, or FCS. The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.

It's also one of the most controversial. Even as some early versions of these weapons make their way onto the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, members of Congress, government investigators and military observers question whether the Defense Department has set the stage for one of its biggest and costliest failures. At risk, they say, are billions of taxpayer dollars spent on exotic technology that may never come to fruition, leaving the Army little time and few resources to prepare for new threats.

See also DoD Transformation: Challenges and Opportunities, a recent presentation by the Comptroller General. Several other recent presentations are also available, including:

"U.S. Financial Condition and Fiscal Future Briefing," by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, before the Center for Governmental Accounting Education and Research's Annual Conference, at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. GAO-08-340CG, November 30.

"Saving Our Future Requires Tough Choices Today," by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, on the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. GAO-08-337CG, December 3.

"America's Fiscal Future," by David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, before the Greater Washington Society of CPAs' Annual Not For Profit Organization Symposium, in Washington, D.C. GAO-08-339CG, December 5.

The Army's $200 Billion Makeover

RINGWOOD -- Notice to those hunting near Ford's toxic dump site: This year, squirrels are safe to eat, but don't add lead-laced wild carrots to the recipe.

That's the latest advice from federal and state agencies investigating potential health threats from toxic waste buried in Upper Ringwood near a residential neighborhood and in a corner of Ringwood State Park.

After startling local hunters with an official report last winter that elevated levels of lead were found in a squirrel at Ford Motor Co.'s former landfill area, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last week that those test results were actually caused by a lab problem.

The EPA issued a press release stating that the problem was caused by a defective blender. But adding to confusion on the wildlife tests, the federal agency also posted on its Web site a detailed April report from its lab consultants describing how they found the same defect in three blenders, which led to discarding five of 73 wildlife samples.

...

"Are we safe with eating squirrels?" asked Roger DeGroat, who lives across Peters Mine Road from the area where the wildlife was tested. "I'd like to have a definitive answer."

If you need squirrel meat that badly to risk consuming toxic waste, you must really like to eat squirrel.

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