Polo waves will arrive Sun night, may top 8 feet, atop 7.2 foot high tides Play

Hurricane waves are going to hit Malibu Sunday night into Tuesday, with eight-foot waves on top of eight-foot high tides, and more erosion possible.

The weather supercomputers are lost. They're not programmed to predict how two hurricanes will interact with each other as they swirl around the coast of Baja California right now. But it does look more and more likely that Malibu will not get any rain from this. We will, however, get a hurricane swell starting probably Sunday night.

Hurricane Polo is still drifting around south of Acapulco, and it's interacting with a tropical depression that used to be Odalys. This is a swirling phenomenon called the Fujiwara effect. The storms may actually bounce off of each other. Most of the computer runs now continue to show Polo tracking up the Baja coast, then turning east over Baja California, eventually sending a lot of rain off towards El Paso, Texas.

The moisture from leftover tropical storm Odalys will probably peter out. We may get some light rain over California early next week, but more likely is a mild Santa Ana of all things developing Monday and Tuesday, pushing any rain clouds back out to sea and giving us very warm sunny temperatures.

There is, however, relatively high confidence in a forecast that Southern California will get southerly swells early next week. Polo is going to poke around the Southern California swell window late Sunday, peaking around the points at Baja California and sending waves up the coast to south-facing beaches.

Big waves, six to eight feet possible, and these will be on top of extreme lunar tides. Monday's high tide is predicted to be 7.2 feet at 10:28 a.m. Tuesday, a little bit higher at 11:01. Remember, high tides are coming in about one foot above the predictions in the tide books. This is due to the warm ocean water and the Kelvin wave effect from El Nino.

Bottom line: no rain, maybe some light rain but no substantial rain. But there are pretty good chances for damaging waves and high tides Monday and Tuesday here in Malibu.

Late Friday morning, the NWS added this hurricane forecast to the So Cal wearther discussion: Hurricane Polo will send a larger southeast swell to our coastline late Sunday through Tuesday. Polo's swell will produce elevated surf across exposed south facing coastlines.

High tides near 7 feet will peak in the late morning hours Monday and Tuesday. The combination of elevated surf and high tides will present another coastal flooding issue across some south facing beaches.

This swell is likely to have a more southeast direction compared to the Labor Day weekend event and the areas of most concern are Long beach (Peninsula and Belmont shore), Avalon, Malibu, and possibly Santa Barbara Harbor.

… There is a low chance for more widespread and significant flooding of seawater and structural damage across vulnerable areas.

There is a high chance for Coastal Flood Advisories to be issued as soon as tomorrow for the Monday-Tuesday timeframe.