Record-high tides forecast for Malibu this week Play

Los Angeles County could see the highest high tides ever Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. A rare combination of the sun, the planets, the moon, and global warming are teaming up this week.

High tide Monday is at 9:18. It's predicted to be 7.7 feet, but you have to add an additional one and a half to two feet from the El Niño push of water — the Kelvin wave — plus extra heights caused by thermal expansion. A very warm ocean takes up more space. If you add it all up, Monday's high tide should come in at about 9.5 feet, likely the highest high tide in recorded Malibu history. Tuesday it'll be a few inches higher.

Sunday morning's high tide was big but about two feet less than this forecast, and even that was enough to again cause coastal flooding at Zuma Beach. Waves flowed over the sand berm Sunday morning, creating a small lagoon on parts of Zuma Beach.

The good news is that this week's very high tides are not going to have big surf on top of them, unlike the damaging waves earlier this month. The waves will be on the small side — one to two feet for the next three or four days.

We're at the peak of an 18-year cycle of high tides caused by the sun, the moon, and the planets, but that's small potatoes. The real impact is from the Kelvin wave — the enormous push of seawater up against the American continent caused by trade wind changes from El Niño down by the equator. And it's not just one Kelvin wave, it's many. The first one may have already passed by Malibu last week, according to NOAA ocean researcher Andrew Lysing, interviewed by the Orange County Register. He predicts there could be up to four more Kelvin waves coming in spurts every couple of weeks over the next few months, all with different strengths. Lysing told the Register that the next Kelvin wave is hitting the tip of Southern Baja California this week and should arrive in Northern California, including Malibu, in the next four weeks.

On top of these Kelvin waves, record hot ocean water temperatures off California are also causing seawater levels to increase higher than normal. Ocean temperatures have been affected not only by human-caused climate change, resulting in the hot water blob off North America, but also by the Kelvin wave.

All of this is predicted to culminate with the highest tides of the year from the moon and the planets, coincidentally bracketing the major winter holidays — at Thanksgiving and at Christmas.

Sunday the tides were so high that sand washed away further west down Westward Beach Road, uncovering some 80-year-old septic tanks. These concrete objects were buried deep in the sand when houses were constructed on that beach nearly a hundred years ago.

The county bought out those homes more than 50 years ago and removed them, but the septic tanks were left behind — now revealed as the beach has nearly completely washed away.