Turn On It, Tune Out, Drop In

N WIND 10 TO 15 KT.
WIND WAVES 1 FOOT.
SW SWELL 8 FT AT 9 SECONDS.
TONIGHT W WIND 10 TO 15 KT.
WIND WAVES 2 FT.
W SWELL 9 FT AT 9 SECONDS.
Not a specific break per se...although plenty of beach break surf in the vicinity. The addition of rip rap to area beaches seems to have adversely affected bottom contours from what I have experienced in surfing there over the past 12 years or so.

This ghost forest of Sitka spruce roots and stumps has likely been buried and exposed on this Oregon beach through the years. Core samples have revealed them to be ancient trees, about 2,000 years old. Many may have been as large as 6 feet in diameter.

Sitkas still grow nearby on ridgeline above the beach. A massive subduction zone earthquake, estimated to have been about magnitude 9 and to have occurred simultaneously along a 1200 km length of coast in January of 1700, dropped the shoreline into the surf. The quake generated tsunamis that devastated the shoreline, snapping the trees to stumps and depositing sand from offshore sandbars to bury them.

Evidence of these quakes and tsunamis are detectable all along the Pacific Northwest coast. Geologic evidence of sand sheets have been found in areas as high as 18 meters above sea level, which indicates a tsunami of at least that height.

A 2 meter high wave struck Japan on January 27th, 1700 and Pacific Northwest Coastal Indians have oral traditions that tell of giant waves that swept away villages on a cold winter night. Archeologists have have found buried villages strewn with debris.

Local Report:

...there were waves. The tide shut down the righthander that was good last weekend, then the peaks just south of that...500 yards south...started getting into 6' peaks that often reeled off pretty sweetly.