Summerland Beach · Tarline

Conditions over time

Live observations

Jul 18, 9:00 AM anon Waterline Patchy 11-50% Slab Sticky Sheen B

Jul 18, 8:04 AM moremesa_mo Rocks Patchy 11-50% Palm – – C

Jul 18, 6:27 AM anon Waterline Broken-continuous >50% Plate Firm – C

Jul 16, 2:36 PM SB Channelkeeper Volunteers ★ Wrack line Patchy 11-50% Palm Liquid Sheen, Odor A

Jul 15, 6:45 PM dr_moreno Rocks Broken-continuous >50% Coin Sticky – C

Jul 15, 7:38 AM anon Waterline Broken-continuous >50% Pea – None C

Jul 15, 6:41 AM anon Wrack line Broken-continuous >50% Palm – Sheen A

Jul 14, 5:42 PM anon Wrack line Broken-continuous >50% Palm Sticky Sheen, Tar balls A

Jul 14, 9:57 AM anon Wrack line Broken-continuous >50% Plate Sticky None A

Jul 13, 5:53 PM anon Waterline Patchy 11-50% Coin Liquid Sheen C

Jul 13, 4:23 PM UCSB COPR Lab ★ Waterline Broken-continuous >50% Palm Sticky None A

Jul 13, 12:00 PM SB Channelkeeper Volunteers ★ Waterline Broken-continuous >50% Pea Sticky Sheen A

Jul 13, 8:29 AM anon Wrack line Broken-continuous >50% Palm Sticky – B

Jul 12, 3:23 PM anon Waterline Broken-continuous >50% – – – C

Jul 12, 1:33 PM copr_val Wrack line Broken-continuous >50% Coin Sticky Sheen A

Jul 12, 1:19 PM anon Waterline Broken-continuous >50% Palm Firm None A

Jul 11, 8:43 AM anon Waterline Sporadic 1-10% Plate Liquid None C

Jul 10, 6:42 PM mesa_lane_mary Wrack line Sporadic 1-10% Palm Liquid None C

Jul 10, 9:36 AM anon Rocks Sporadic 1-10% Plate – – B

Jul 10, 9:27 AM anon Waterline Patchy 11-50% Slab Firm Sheen A

16-day forecast

Sat, 7/18 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 15.1s 11.1kt onshore Overcast · 78°F 96%

Sun, 7/19 AM 4.6ft · chest-to-head 4.6ft @ 16.1s 12kt onshore Patchy Fog · 68°F 93%

Sun, 7/19 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 16.4s 12.2kt onshore Partly Sunny · 71°F 93%

Mon, 7/20 AM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 16.1s 12.9kt onshore Patchy Fog · 68°F 91%

Mon, 7/20 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 16.9s 12.9kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 73°F 91%

Tue, 7/21 AM 4.6ft · chest-to-head 4.6ft @ 16.1s 11.6kt onshore Patchy Fog · 67°F 88%

Tue, 7/21 PM 4.3ft · chest-to-head 4.3ft @ 16s 11.3kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 76°F 88%

Wed, 7/22 AM 3.9ft · chest-to-head 3.9ft @ 15.6s 12.9kt onshore Partly Sunny · 68°F 86%

Wed, 7/22 PM 4.1ft · chest-to-head 4.1ft @ 14.7s 12.6kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 77°F 86%

Thu, 7/23 AM 3.5ft · chest-to-head 3.5ft @ 14.2s 12.1kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 69°F 83%

Thu, 7/23 PM 3ft · chest-to-head 3ft @ 13.9s 11.5kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 76°F 83%

Fri, 7/24 AM 2.8ft · waist-high 2.8ft @ 13.1s 12.9kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 68°F 81%

Fri, 7/24 PM 2.3ft · waist-high 2.3ft @ 12.7s 12.6kt onshore Mostly Sunny · 74°F 81%

Sat, 7/25 AM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 12.8s 11.9kt onshore Partly Sunny · 67°F 78%

Sat, 7/25 PM 2.4ft · waist-high 2.4ft @ 12.4s 12.9kt onshore – 78%

Sun, 7/26 AM 2.1ft · waist-high 2.1ft @ 12.6s 11.7kt onshore – 76%

Sun, 7/26 PM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 12.4s 11.1kt onshore – 76%

Mon, 7/27 AM 2.1ft · waist-high 2.1ft @ 13.6s 12.7kt onshore – 73%

Mon, 7/27 PM 2ft · waist-high 2ft @ 14.4s 12.3kt onshore – 73%

Tue, 7/28 AM 2.3ft · waist-high 2.3ft @ 14.6s 11.8kt onshore – 71%

Tue, 7/28 PM 2.4ft · waist-high 2.4ft @ 15.3s 11.6kt onshore – 71%

Wed, 7/29 AM 3.1ft · chest-to-head 3.1ft @ 16s 12.2kt onshore – 68%

Wed, 7/29 PM 3.6ft · chest-to-head 3.6ft @ 16.6s 11.7kt onshore – 68%

Thu, 7/30 AM 3.4ft · chest-to-head 3.4ft @ 16.4s 11.4kt onshore – 66%

Thu, 7/30 PM 4.1ft · chest-to-head 4.1ft @ 16.5s 12.1kt onshore – 66%

Fri, 7/31 AM 4.3ft · chest-to-head 4.3ft @ 16.1s 12.2kt onshore – 63%

Fri, 7/31 PM 4.7ft · chest-to-head 4.7ft @ 16.3s 11.3kt onshore – 63%

Sat, 8/1 AM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 15.4s 12.9kt onshore – 61%

Sat, 8/1 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 15s 11.5kt onshore – 61%

Sun, 8/2 AM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 14.3s 12.8kt onshore – 58%

Sun, 8/2 PM 4.9ft · chest-to-head 4.9ft @ 13.5s 11.4kt onshore – 58%

Mon, 8/3 AM 4.7ft · chest-to-head 4.7ft @ 13s 11.1kt onshore – 58%

Mon, 8/3 PM 5ft · chest-to-head 5ft @ 13.1s 11.2kt onshore – 58%

Confidence is an estimate based on forecast lead time.

Nearby buoys

NDBC 46054 just now

Wave ht –

Period –

Water temp 59.2°F

Station 46054 on NDBC →

History

Piers over the tideline

Summerland’s oil history predates almost everyone else’s. In 1896, a rancher and speculator named Henry L. Williams, having already worked shallow oil deposits on his bluff-top land, noticed that his best wells sat closest to the water — and reasoned the richest oil must be under the ocean itself. His solution was to simply extend the land onto the sea: he built a wooden wharf out from the beach and drilled straight down through the end of it. It worked. Within a couple of years, some 400 wells drilled from more than a dozen wharves that marched into the surf crowded the Summerland tidal flat and surf zone, widely credited as the world’s first offshore oil wells — decades before the platforms that now sit further out in the Santa Barbara Channel.

The boom was short and messy. Wells were drilled close together with little regard for spacing or long-term sealing, production fell off within a decade, and operators walked away from the field almost as fast as they’d built it. What they left behind was a beach threaded with abandoned well casings, many never properly plugged to modern standards because “modern standards” didn’t exist yet when they were drilled. Summerland’s sand and surf have been dealing with the consequences ever since: over the following century, a number of these legacy wells have reactivated or failed slowly, seeping small but persistent amounts of crude into the sand and nearshore water. The most visible recent case has been the Becker well, an old Summerland-field bore whose casing has periodically reopened a path for oil to reach the surface just offshore, prompting monitoring and cleanup work along the beach in the years since it was rediscovered.

This is the context worth keeping in mind when a black-flag advisory goes up at Summerland: unlike a modern tanker or pipeline spill with a single identifiable source, oil here can be coming from three different places at once — the regional Coal Oil Point-style natural seepage that runs along much of this coastline, a leaking century-old well no one fully mapped, or (rarely, but not never) a genuine new incident. Summerland is a useful reminder that “leak or seep” isn’t always an either/or question, and that a beach’s oil history can still be actively writing itself, one slow well failure at a time.