With thoughts of fire and hopes for rain

DENNIS McTIGHE

Lots of folks are having a real bad day. Lots of animals, too. Our

faith is being tested, this time by some fools who thought this would

be cool.

We here in Laguna, know exactly what a real bad day is too; 10

years ago today was a rough one for us.

We’re praying hard.

We kinda knew it wasn’t gonna be easy, what with the first hot

October Santa Ana howler since ’93. In 2000, our first Santa Ana

wasn’t until Christmas Day late afternoon, but five inches of rain

had already fallen by Dec. 25.

We’ve had a 10th of an inch since late April, coming in a brief

morning thunderstorm on July 22.

The vegetation grew tall this season, because of above normal

rainfall by 15 to 30% in the fire stricken regions and back in

October ’93 we were coming on the heels of double normal rains for

the ’92 to ’93 season.

By a small miracle, our neighborhood experienced only brief

offshore winds late Saturday night that did not exceed 20 mph, Lord

knows, some loser woulda been out there by the highways with a

lighter or flare.

The last time we had significant moisture in October was Oct. 30

1996 when 1.70 inches fell.

On a lighter subject, certainly taking a back burner in priority

in light of current circumstances, but the surf gods have been very

good to us in October.

An early run of northwest groundswells (good direction) and an end

of the month strong Southern hemisphere have kept a lot of us in the

66- to 68-degree water a good deal of the time.

On Oct. 27, it was 6 to 8 feet at the Lowers and 8 to 10 feet at

the Wedge.

Patricia came and went without even a whimper, we’re 0 for 16 in

Baja swells in 2003.

It’s really hard to write about such frivolities as surf, weather,

etc. when this catastrophe is around us. I don’t mean to be

insensitive, quite the opposite.

Hope things are better next week -- please.

Be bold in prayer.

* 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.