I am normally the one person you won’t find in the surf in anything less than a thin summer wetsuit. However, over the past six weeks I have surfed, sup surfed or swam in shorts and T-shirt every day in whatever surf we have had (which also has been unusually lacking even for summer except for a few good days).
This is not normal as far as I am concerned. I’ve been in these local waters to varying degrees all my life and I don’t remember ever being so comfortable that I can surf in shorts for an hour or more and not be cold. I am by no means a scientist nor do I know anything about what is being reported continually about global warming so I cannot comment on that. I do however have decades of experience in these waters and based solely on that I can confidently say the water temperature is not normal.
Maybe it is due to a lack of surf making the surface heat up and stay warm without being broken up, maybe it is a change in local currents bringing water from the rivers closer to shore, maybe it is local to the beaches and breaks I’m surfing every day, maybe it is in fact global warming. I don’t know, but it is kinda nice to just throw on shorts and scarper off into the surf and not get sunburnt to a crisp at the same time like I might in a foreign country. I tend to notice changes in the sea and weather as do all longtime surfers and I’m sure others have also noticed this unusual occurrence.
(BTW, if you are a novice surfer, paddle boarder etc, I still think you should wear a wetsuit in this area, especially if you have any desire to be paddling along the coast with potential exposure to wind or currents that could lead to you being on the water longer than you might have planned).
