The Aleutian juice of winter has struck the islands again. After a couple of weeks of swells from the north and western Pacific hitting the North Shore, the winter surf season seems to have arrived early, drawing surfers and hordes of onlookers.

“The waves definitely cause a lot more numbers,” Honolulu Ocean Safety Lt. Kyle Foyle said. And when contests are running — the Haleiwa Challenger starting Saturday, the Vans Pipe Masters Dec. 8, and on until late February — “our population doubles,” he said.

Big ripples kept North Shore lifeguards busy this week, with a major swell that hit Thursday requiring six rescues at Waimea Bay, four elsewhere and 2,455 preventive actions, Honolulu Emergency Services Department spokesperson Shayne Enright said. The National Weather Service issued a high-surf warning, likely to continue into the weekend, for all the islands’ northern shores as well as a high-surf advisory for western shores as the swell wraps in. The Thanksgiving surf was estimated to be 20 to 30 feet with northeast winds up to 30 mph.

Earlier this week, leading up to Wednesday, lifeguards made 22 rescues and 6,500 preventive actions on the North Shore. Those in need can be unsuspecting beachgoers, swimmers and surfers. “Several of our rescues were people riding really inadequate equipment in 8- to 12-foot surf, not really knowing they were in trouble,” Foyle said about the recent surf. In other words, that small-wave board won’t get you into a wave three times your height.

Lifeguards have noticed a recent trend compounding the problem: Since COVID-19 restrictions imposed in 2020 voided soccer fields and basketball courts, more athletic types of various ages turned to the waves. Boards were bought. Lineups ballooned. Among those in the lineups are some adult learners who may not have absorbed the same ocean awareness of someone who started surfing at 5 years old.

“The novice surfer is a new avenue,” Foyle said. Often they don’t expect the North Shore’s fluctuations, that 4 feet can jack up to too big in one session.

Foyle urges those in doubt about going out to talk to a lifeguard first. “Come talk to us. I can give you a plan, some advice. I’d rather be doing that than being outside Ke Iki, 10, 12 feet, trying to rescue you,” he said.

Sand on the move

As lifeguards patrol the beaches, the sand underneath them will be on the move as well. Summer easterly tradewinds and waves push sand from Sunset toward Pupukea, but winter swells from the northwest tend to push it back, said Chip Fletcher, interim dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“There are some areas that will fill the beach out, but there are other areas where, as we saw, houses may tip over onto the sand,” he said, alluding to the Sunset Beach house that fell onto the beach in February, a sign of what’s to come as the climate changes and sea levels rise.

Nearly three-quarters of North Shore beaches are experiencing chronic erosion, pushing the shoreline landward, an October report from the North Shore Coastal Resilience Working Group said. “This is leading to seasonal and permanent beach loss in front of seawalls and other development,” the report, a product of numerous stakeholders and researchers, said. It estimated that a little more than a quarter of beachfront homes on the North Shore are within 20 feet of the shoreline.

In September a homeowner poured concrete along Sunset Beach to protect his house from encroaching waters. Boulders, sandbags and black tarps still front nearby houses, risking further narrowing of the beach, coastal geologists have warned.

Michael Cain, administrator of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Office of Conservation and Coastal Lands, expects North Shore beaches to grow in the winter, since the “serious erosion” occurs in the spring and summer, he said in an email to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “The models predict that this will be a ‘La Nina’ year, so we expect to see similar patterns of erosion as we did last year,” he said. “However, it is impossible to predict where the specific erosion hot spots will be year to year.”