14 OCTOBER. CALIFORNIA: KELVIN WAVE:

Bodega Bay: 70 miles north of San Francisco, 38.18' N 123.03' W. We experienced a hard blow on 6 Oct.'97 that we would only associate with a spring or early summer upwelling. Our local upwelling is intense. A drop of 3-4 degrees C is expected after four to six hours when it blows continuously at thirty mph+. During the 6 Oct '97 blow it was gusting to 45mph+ and yet after 24 hours the sea surface temp never dropped more than 1.5 degrees from the steady 13.5 it has been holding at for a week now. I spoke with a biological oceanographer about this observation and he says this is good evidence of the colder water we would normally see coming up and onshore with an upwelling being displaced by a Kelvin wave that shifted the thermocline so that warmer water was feeding the upwelling.-- Paul Siri <pasiri@ucdavis.edu> (This appears to be a polar-moving Kelvin wave which would have originated from the original equatorial east-ward moving Kelvin wave that struck Peru. If so, then California can truly say it has ENSO conditions.--Ed.)