When Nathan Cool hits the waves
with his surfboard, he can sometimes tell you that he
spotted the swells coming from a corner of the Pacific
7,000 miles away, days ago.
He tells you that African dust is the reason why the
Atlantic hurricane season which rocked and stunned the
nation last year has been relatively punchless so far
this year.
He's bold
enough to offer his thoughts on global warming in the
form of a new book, his fifth, due out next month.
Cool doesn't hang with sea lions on ocean buoys to
get this stuff, but he taps into data collected by those
metallic bobbleheads. Much of his work on waves,
hurricanes and climate change comes from a nerve center
well inland the computer at his Newbury Park home.
Sporting an airy whitish decor offset nicely by the
stunning black piano in the living room, the
immaculately groomed place is about as far removed as
can be from rough-and-tumble waves, unkempt and damp
surf shacks and surfing's gonzo, live-in-the-moment
mentality.
It is an odd locale for wave news to emanate from,
but it is from here that Cool can tell you when the surf
will be waist-to-chest-high at C Street in Ventura or
"double overhead" at Rincon.
He typically starts working up surf summaries at 5
a.m. daily. Predicting the surf, he tells you, is his
real passion, the thing he keeps drifting more and more
toward, even if it's not a big moneymaker.
Cool, 43, is the chief forecaster at WetSand.com, a
well-respected surfing Web site that has more than
21,000 readers in Southern California alone.
If surf is a complex dance among waves, wind,
temperature, angles of approach, local geography and a
few seasonal monkey wrenches thrown in, then Cool does
the tango with heavy doses of science and computer
technology in his step.
Click--up on Cool's screen pops a map showing wind
speeds around the Pacific. Click--up pops a map showing
buoy locations along the coast and readings from them
winds, water temperatures, swell heights and swell
periods (the time elapsed between two crests). Click--
there's a map showing storms across the Pacific's great
expanse, including a huge one east of New Zealand, not
far from the Antarctic ice cap.
Near is affected from afar
This time of year, Cool noted, that's where we get
much of our surf. He is fascinated by the idea that
events 6,000 and 7,000 miles away can help shape local
shore conditions.
"You have these monster storms, some the size of
Arizona, that produce these 40- and 50-foot waves down
there," Cool noted.
That energy, he noted, has to go somewhere. It's the
pebble dropped in the bucket on a gigantic scale; sooner
or later, the ripples get here. If those storms stray
far enough north, they'll send pulses of energy all the
way across the Pacific to us; in general, he said, a
storm in the Tasman Sea is about 10 days away from
producing swells here.
Such energy will travel a certain distance over time,
Cool said, adding: "I can sit here and go, ΏPeru will
get this, Costa Rica will get this, Baja will get this,
Southern California will get this. Ώ' It's basic fluid
dynamics."
Reacting locally
Of course, large swells from afar don't always
translate into good surf. Local variables come into
play. Near-shore winds can chew up waves. Waves can
change direction as they approach shore and interact
with the ocean floor's topography; they also can change
height. Certain beaches are better for swells coming
from a certain direction. And so on.
All this and more factor into his surf forecasts.
Cool throws around scientific terms such as shoaling,
angular spread and bathymetry with the same
conversational ease an average boarder has ordering
their favorite burrito at a local stand after a hard
morning getting worked by the waves.
His Web site includes click footnotes with
definitions of such terms. The site also includes a
swell time calculator that uses, he said
matter-of-factly, "pi radian math based on the curvature
of the Earth."
He does surf forecasts for the California coast, the
U.S. East Coast and Central America. He updates all
those at least once a week, as well as provides
long-range seasonal forecasts.
As for the accuracy of his forecasts, Cool replied,
"We rarely hear any negative feedback."
He uses wave, wind and weather models provided by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Noting
that it's public information from a government agency
"our taxpayer dollars at work" Cool said almost anyone
can do what he does.
But he allowed that most don't have the persistence
it takes to meld all the data, nor do some surfers ever
bother to look at predictions. It perhaps helps that
Cool is a software engineer, weather guy and scientist.
Such talk leads to hurricanes, which can kick up some
hellacious waves. A big reason the Atlantic hurricane
season has been relatively quiet, Cool said, is the
massive quantities of dust being blown into the
atmosphere from drought-stricken Africa. That dust
and, yes, click, he can pull up a satellite image of
that, too has disrupted the cycle of moisture, heat,
water temperatures and convection in the ocean off that
continent's coast, where many hurricanes are born.
Active season ahead
Last week, NOAA hurricane forecasters downgraded
earlier predictions that this season would be a severe
one like 2005, though they still think it'll be active.
You can't tie hurricanes to global warming, Cool
said. Too many other factors are in play; last year was
marked by a lack of wind shear that often tears apart
hurricanes and by a clockwise Atlantic wind pattern that
moved closer to the U.S. coast, throwing storm after
storm at our shores. On the other hand, the lack of
hurricanes this year shouldn't be used by anti-global
warming zealots either, he said.
Cool's forthcoming book on global warming, "Is it Hot
in Here?," attempts to cut through the heavy
politicizing and hype on both sides of the issue. Much
uncertainty surrounds global warming, which is why it's
so hotly debated, he said. It's also true that the
planet endured warming cycles long before humans came to
be. But--
"I do conclude that human-induced global warming is
real," Cool said.
Greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut, and people
should be thinking of higher ground, he said. People
never truly react until a critical-mass crisis is at
hand; right now, Cool said he believes we're on the
borderline, with everyone waiting for the big lightning
bolt to drop down that tells us, "OK, we really do have
a problem."
He tries to present this in a neutral, balanced
manner.
"I don't want to preach to anyone and say, ΏGo buy a
hybrid,' although that would help," he said.
"Unfortunately, what happens now has to do with some of
the biggest businesses in the world and some of the
richest countries in the world.--And the big thing is,
how far will it go?"
Dipping into WetSand
For now, Cool's got more wave predictions to prepare,
more 5 a.m. science sessions at the computer screen. He
started doing it in 1995, he said only half-jokingly,
"so I wouldn't have to pay for surf forecasts."
Cool's first stab, SurfingTheVenturaCoast.com, came
in the Internet's infancy and was a bit bare bones. It
morphed two years later into WaveCast.com. In 1999,
WaveCast merged into WetSand.com.
Plans are to expand the surf service with more
frequent updates and to other areas, he said.
Cool is a long way from Jeff Spicoli, Sean Penn's
dope-smoking, over-the-top, surfer-dude character from
the 1982 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
The Spicoli image is one that makes many surfers
cringe, but Cool said he believes there's something to
be said for Spicoli's free-thinking,
don't-always-do-what-you're-told, live-in-the-moment
lifestyle.
"Dogs don't realize they are going to die someday,"
he said, a smile forming in a nod to such blissful
innocence.
There's also something to be said for putting a
little scientific pizazz into surf, to learn how, why
and when swells from long, long across the Pacific will
grace our local shores. Even now, Nathan Cool is drawing
a bead on the next batch of waves.
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