Surfing

February 8, 2016

Storm Imogen Brings Winds and Swells to SW England

Storm Imogen arrived overnight, announcing her appearance with thunder and lightning here in the Haldon Hills. Now that the sun has risen, here's how the surf on the north coast looks at Woolacombe, courtesy of Trev Lumley of Eyeball Surfcheck:

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January 19, 2016

Two Pairs of Hurricane Force Storms

The Ocean Prediction Center of the United States' National Weather Service highlighted this unusual situation on their Twitter feed yesterday:

Four hurricane force lows in the two ocean basins within the next 24 hours!

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July 26, 2015

Wet and Windy Weather is Bad For Our Beaches

The Met Office currently has a yellow weather warning for wind in place for South West England for tomorrow:

saying that:

Winds are already strong in many places though Sunday. However, west to southwesterly winds are expected to increase further during Monday. Inland gusts of 40-45 mph are possible, whilst gusts may exceed 50 mph along the north coasts of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset

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October 7, 2012

How Global Warming Causes Bugs on British Beaches

In the good old days I used to pore over atmospheric pressure charts kindly provided online by the likes of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF for short) before making a decision on exactly where and when to go surfing.  Here's what they are revealing to me today:

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October 11, 2011

Hurricane Jova to Pound Tourists and Mexico's Biggest Container Port

Unfortunately the weekend's forecast for the future of Hurricane Jova seems to be have been quite accurate. According to Reuters this morning:

Jova will make landfall on Tuesday afternoon or evening to the northwest of Manzanillo near the resort towns of Melaque and Barra de Navidad, on a stretch of coast dotted with beaches south of Puerto Vallarta.

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October 2, 2011

Hurricane Ophelia Batters Bermuda

We're a bit behind on our reporting of the progress of Hurricane Ophelia, because we've been frantically busy here in South West England launching our latest project, which is entitled "Contemporary Art in the Community". More on all that soon, but for now we must firstly apologise to Bermudan resident Tina Barnard who gave us and our other readers some extremely sound advice on how to survive if a hurricane should ever head in the direction of you and your loved ones.

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September 4, 2011

Surfing Professionals at Long Beach Look Forward to Katia's Swell

Back in January the Association of Surfing Professionals announced their controversial decision to hold:

The first-ever ASP World Tour stop on the East Coast of the United States,  set to take place on Long Island’s Long Beach from September 4-15. The event will offer a $1 million dollar prize purse to competitors, an amount unprecedented in professional surfing.

According to the initial press release:

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November 7, 2010

Kelly Wins 10th World Title. Andy is Dead.

Kelly Slater has just won the world tour event in Puerto Rico, and with it his tenth world surfing championship.

The contest was suspended for two days earlier this week because three times world champion Andy Irons had just died. In his hotel room, apparently of dengue fever.

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March 2, 2010

Haiti – The History, The Hate and The Earthquake

In February 2005  I went on a surfing trip to the Caribbean. Since I speak English rather than French I went to Barbados rather than Haiti, and made a pilgrimage to Bathsheba on the east coast. According to Kelly Slater, the "Tiger Woods" of surfing, and 9 times world champion:

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February 10, 2010

Britain and America's "First Geeks"

This weeks edition of the Economist contains a long article on the suddenly hot topic of "Open Data". The subhead sums up the issue like this:

In several countries more official data are being issued in raw form so that anybody can use them. This forces bureaucrats and creative types to interact in new ways.

and the article points out that:

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