In Brief

Beach Calm

The 2021 holiday season was calm at the beach. Rain dampened the days bringing few ocean visitors until the 1st of the year when the cancellation of the Penguin Plunge didn’t detour the 700 people who kept up the tradition of plunging into winter’s water. As the weather cleared over the weekend, another 10,000 or so beach walkers turned up. Then on the morning of January 15, the lifeguards were in place, keeping visitors safely away from the shore following a tsunami warning that was issued for the California coastline triggered by an underwater volcanic eruption across the sea near Tonga more than 5000 miles away. The undersea eruption did cause some irregular, energetic, racy, and foamy wave action locally but no damage.