MAX EBB — "D
o I have to put on my sea boots just to walk across the parking lot?" I "We really wanted to race!" complained. The depth of the puddle sur"There are lots of weekends to choose rounding my car exceeded the freeboard from, all winter," I explained. "Personally, of my shoes. Now my socks were wet. Yes, in the winter I like to race only on the I usually carry spares in the car — but days when it's warm and sunny, and I've had too many evenings at the yacht that's the RC's philosophy too. We get club with cold damp feet; hence the foot enough of the cold and wet stuff in the doctor's orders: "Always change to dry summer. So I think canceling today's socks after sailing." But I had used the race was the right move." spares I keep in the car last weekend and "But you're used to the drought years, had neglected to re-stock. and now we're in for a lot more rainy The yacht club parking lot, like most yacht club parking lots, is on landfill that has been sinking and shifting for "Even a strong El Niño," the last 40 years, so of course it does added another one of Lee's not drain properly. Combine a heavy rain with an extra-high tide, and there wasn't crew, "won't get California enough grade to persuade the water to out of the drought." flow anywhere. In fact, it was hard to tell just where the parking lot ended and the weekends," Lee asserted. "If they won't harbor began. give us a race in 20 knots of wind and I squished my way across the puddles, a little rain, it's going to become hard to walked into the club, stowed the umcomplete a midwinter series." brella, and went directly to the fireplace. "Actually, Lee," I suggested, "I think It turned out that I was not the only you're secretly happy to sit by the fireone drying off wet feet at the fire. Lee place today. Now that the race is officially Helm and her all-female, all-student canceled, it's easy to say that you'd much crew were there too, having sailed to our rather be out there getting slammed." guest dock from the nearby hoist where Of course they all adamantly denied they had put their borrowed ultralight this possibility. race boat into the water. They were not happy. "Max," she whined. "like, why did they eanwhile my own foredeck crew, have to cancel the race?" who knew the race was canceled but "Maybe the fact that it's a miserable, had also come down to the marina just wet, stormy day had something to do to watch the wind and waves from the with it?" I suggested. warmth and safety of the yacht club bar, "Totally superficial details," she anjoined the conversation. swered. "But it's not that windy — just, "Sure glad they canceled!" he said, like, small craft warnings, same as any being older and wiser than Lee's crew. summer afternoon. No gale warnings or "It looks like no fun at all out there. And anything." did you see how high the tide is today? "The race committee are wimps," deYou could walk right into the harbor if clared another young woman who was part of Lee's The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, El crew.
M
Niño's big brother, in warm and cold phases. Red is water warmer than usual, blue is water colder than usual.
those light poles weren't there to mark the edge of the flooded parking lot." "Lee might be right about the longterm forecast," said one of her crew. "We could be in for a lot more weather like this, and an extra dose of rising sea level besides. The Eastern Pacific has been lagging behind the Atlantic on that, but it's about to catch up." "That won't help our flooded parking lot any," added my foredeck crew. "Is this an El Niño thing?" I asked Lee. "If predictions are correct..." "Like, it's much bigger than El Niño," Lee replied. "Think of it as El Niño's big brother," said Lee's crew. "The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO." "Never heard of it," I said. "Oh, you will!" she said. "It was only first identified and named in '97, so it's not a household thing like El Niño just yet. But it's the big kahuna of Pacific climate cycles." "How is it different from El Niño?" I asked as I finished peeling off my wet socks so I could hang them over the top of the screen in front of the fireplace. "The key word is 'decadal'. That means it takes decades to cycle from warm to cold and back again. El Niño is a short-term thing by comparison, typically lasting only six to 18 months." "Even a strong El Niño," added another one of Lee's crew, "won't get California out of the drought." "But the PDO," continued the other woman, who turned out to be an oceanography postdoc, "can take 10 or 20 years to cycle on and off. So we could see a whole decade or even two decades of wet winters after a PDO regime shift." "Is this what NOAA is forecasting?" asked my foredeck guy. "Are we on the cusp of a change?" "NOAA doesn't try to predict the PDO," she told us. "It's way too chaotic." Lee had gone uncharacteristically quiet, because she was searching for something on her phone's Web browser. "Here it is!" she announced, and held up the phone to show me what was on the screen. "El Niño is mostly an equatorial thing, with most of the temperature oscillations in the tropics, and currents taking some warm water north. But, like,
