Record king tides flood the California coast, damage 114 properties in Huntington Beach, and keep warnings in place through Sunday

The water came in without a storm. Since Monday, October 26, a run of exceptional tides, the autumn king tides that follow the full moon, has pushed the Pacific over seawalls and up through storm drains into some of the most expensive coastline in America. At the San Diego tide gauge, the water reached 2.60 metres, 8.52 feet above mean lower low water, on Tuesday, October 27, the highest reading in the station's record, one day after the same gauge set a record at 8.44 feet. La Jolla recorded a preliminary all time high of 7.98 feet. Newport Beach measured 8.3 feet on Monday and a record 8.4 feet on Tuesday, flooding the Balboa Peninsula and Newport Harbor. Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro and Santa Barbara broke their all time records as well, Santa Barbara four days running.

Huntington Beach took the worst of the damage count. Tides reached 8.2 feet there during the week, and flooding hit Huntington Harbor and Sunset Beach, the low strip of houses along Pacific Coast Highway where seawater came up through the drains and across the road. The city counted 114 damaged properties, closed Pacific Coast Highway between Warner Avenue and Anderson Street and closed Saybrook Lane between Edinger Avenue and Humboldt Drive, and deployed pumps, sand berms and sandbags. City Manager Travis Hopkins proclaimed a local emergency on October 26 in his capacity as director of emergency services, citing the actual and threatened effects of the tides, coastal flooding, high surf and erosion, and the city council met in special session on October 30 to ratify the declaration and adopt further emergency orders. The Huntington Beach Fire Department has reported no injuries, a fact worth holding onto given how much false material about this flood has circulated online, including an invented story of a child killed by a sewage release that no local report supports.

The flooding was not only Californian, and not only on one coast. ABC News reported king tides inundating beach communities in Florida and the Carolinas in the same week, with Fort Lauderdale's resilience officer noting water about six inches higher than in past king tide events there. AccuWeather tied the episode to high tides combined with elevated ocean levels, and forecasters point to warm ocean water and El Nino conditions holding sea levels up along the shore. The October 25 full moon set the astronomical part of it. The rest is the ocean sitting higher than the gauges are used to.

The immediate event is easing as the weekend begins, but it is not finished. The National Weather Service has extended coastal flood advisories around San Francisco Bay, San Pablo Bay and Monterey Bay through Sunday, November 1, with some Pacific facing stretches covered through Saturday. And the calendar holds more of the same. The California Coastal Commission's designated winter king tide periods fall on November 24 to 26 and December 23 to 25, and again on January 21 and 22, and Governor Gavin Newsom has warned that tides could reach nine feet around Christmas. The towns that spent this week pumping out their streets have about three weeks to get ready to do it again.