Glad Weather Tidings Send Thousands to Beach

Thousands of beach-goers, propelled by unseasonably warm weather and heavy ocean swells, flocked to the Orange County shore Sunday, taking an early-winter reprieve from holiday shopping and busying area lifeguards with a number of battered surfers and bicyclists.

“We had a lot of people who took a break from the lines in the stores and decided to work on their tan lines instead,” said Brent Ranek, a lifeguard at Newport Beach, where as many as 10,000 beach-goers staked out places in the sand rather than the malls.

Newport Beach lifeguards made two rescues of swimmers caught in riptides and treated some cuts and bruises, Ranek said, but that did little to dampen the spirit of a springlike afternoon just a few weeks before winter’s official debut.

Similar reports came from lifeguards and park officials throughout Orange County. Surf of four to six feet--with some county beaches reporting waves as big as eight feet--made the day ideal for surfers, and though water temperatures in the low 60s held down the number of swimmers, sunny skies and gentle, warm breezes made the beach a popular afternoon spot.

“There’s lots of surfers and sunbathers, many more than we’d usually have this time of year,” said Gus Avila, a lifeguard at Bolsa Chica State Beach. On a normal, early December weekend day, the park would be lucky to draw 1,000 visitors, Avila added, but Sunday’s crowd was estimated at 25,000.

Scott Diederich, a seasonal lifeguard at Laguna Beach. Diederich estimated that about 8,000 people had ventured to the beach by mid-afternoon, busy for a December day but far below the 35,000 to 40,000 who flock to the beach on a hot summer weekend afternoon.

“It’s been a busy day for the kind of staff we have out there,” said Lt. Steve Davidson of the Huntington Beach lifeguard office. “We’ve had a shoulder dislocation and a couple of lacerations.”

“It’s hit this beach pretty hard,” said Lon Graham, a lifeguard at Huntington State Beach. “We’ve been pretty busy, with quite a few surfers losing their boards and things like that.” Most of the state beach accidents occurred far from the break. Bicyclists racked up the biggest collection of battle scars.

Huntington State Beach reported some of the day’s biggest waves, with surf breaking at six to eight feet.