For Northern California surfers, winter is normally a tumultuous season when the storm-charged Pacific delivers huge swells, high winds and bursts of rain.
But the past four weeks have been the opposite — a blissful period of historically warm air temperatures and exceptionally little wind that has produced a steady drumbeat of gentle swells and made for the most consistently perfect conditions surfers can remember.
“It’s been flawless. It’s like magic,” said Grant Washburn, a longtime Bay Area big-wave surfer who lives on the San Mateo County coastside. “If you squinted your eyes and looked at 30 years of swell data, you’d see this period we’re in right now and be like, what’s going on there? What’s been going on is, it’s been incredible for a long time.”…