I'll say this one more time, and then I'll leave you alone: There's absolutely no way you could know the exact height, swell, strength or breaking
point of each wave. Every one of them is a bit different, and this covers any time from the later afternoon on the day before he was found, til the early morning before he was found.
It's absolutely impossible for you to say where each wave broke, and absolutely, unequivocably impossible to prove that he couldn't have ended up where he ended up.
Ever stand on the beach with your back to it on a QUIET day when there was NO storm? You can be standing there talking, thinking that you're at least 10 feet from where the waves are coming in, and then....blammo; you're knocked over by a wave. And this can happen when there's NO wind at all. Water levels really have nothing to do with waves and where they break.
What I wrote about wave heights and and where they break is NOT hypothetical. Waves come in at different heights and break in different areas and that has little to do with the water levels at that time. And since you weren't there on the night that Conner washed in and didn't psychically see what happened, you are presenting hypotheticals.
He could have washed over in a high wave, or he could have gotten stuck in the jetty days before that and then gotten washed through a day or so later as the waters whirled, as far as you or I or anyone else knows.
Wave height is dependent upon winds that occur hundreds of miles out at sea, and upon the
phases of the moon, as well as many other factors (yes; even in the bay).
to respond to desmond's points (and desmond is certainly welcome to come back and defend his/her position):
1. ocean waves DO NOT make it to the Conner and Laci recovery sites. They just don't. Not even ocean swells make it much past the Golden Gate Bridge.
Relatively little offshore swell energy makes it into SF Bay, particularly east of Crissy Field, and these low energy waves are likely a complicated blend of waves that have refracted across the SF bar into the golden gate entrance channel, and waves that have reflected off the coastal cliffs along the channel sides to get into the bay. The SF Office of the Army Corps of Engineers, and Prof. Mark Stacey at UC Berkeley, might be able to provide you with additional information about waves which impact harbor areas in the bay. (Source: email from William O'Reilly, ucsd.edu)
2. For a wave to be responsible for where Conner was found, it would have to be large enough to propel Conner more than 35 feet. The breakwater is at least 10-12 feet across + Conner was found 24 feet inland. A superwave would have to propel Conner into the air, to land beyond the debris line. Darned debris line, unbroken and undisturbed, sitting there as a witness to the truth. But a body is not thrown out of the water into the air by a wave -- it is pushed down into the water. In addition, such a super wave would not hit just the Conner recovery site -- it would undoubtedly also hit the neighboring park, the neighboring richmond marina, and the neighboring Point Isabel. No such super wave was noted by anyone at anytime in the Richmond Inner Harbor. They simply do not happen.
3. I have captured on video the wave action that occurs during equivalent wind conditions and water levels. Even the storm on Dec 18, 2005 did not produce such super waves, even though it created a storm surge of 11 inches. Nothing was being hurled 35 feet by the waves. It simply doesn't happen.
4. Of course the reason is that desmond is comparing apples and oranges. He is comparing surfing on the ocean to conditions in the Richmond Inner Harboe. He linked an article by someone talking about how instantly huge waves can be generated along the ocean coast that borders the SF Bay -- but that is exactly the point, it's the ocean coast, not the Richmond Inner Harbor.
Good science requires understanding the dynamics of the particular environment. It doesn't matter what happens in other environments, we can only deal with what happens in this specific environment.
Others have said, the Bay is too unpredictable to say what didn't happen. That is a very unscientific claim. The NOAA has several stations that regularly monitor water levels and wind conditions -- in fact, every 6 minutes. There are other wind stations in the Bay that monitor wind conditions for surfers. The BAAQMD has a monitoring station right behind the Conner recovery site. There is no doubt what the water levels and wind conditions were on the day before and the day Conner was found.
desmond's point that Conner could have gotten stuck in the rocks, and then washed through a day or so later, again shows his ignorance of the Conner site environment. Conner would have been food for the hundreds of birds that make the Conner site their habitat. I've captured those hundreds of birds in pictures.
I doubt very much that desmond knows the details of when Conner was found -- how much time had passed since the higher high tide.
Others have remarked that I'm not an expert, and until an expert testifies, they won't believe what I say. That again demonstrates a lack of understanding. It doesn't take an expert to determine what the water levels and wind conditions were on April 12-13, 2003. It doesn't take an expert to find out when the water levels will be equivalent height, and to go to the site and observe the conditions. It doesn't take an expert to determine the exact water levels for that day when the verified data is published. It doesn't take an expert to find out what the wind conditions were.
Cheng allegedly is an expert, but he did not do a single one of those things. Why not? What scientist will attempt to explain what happened at a given site without becoming familiar with that site's peculiar dynamics? I am very positive that if Cheng had done what I did.
And when did Distaso, Harris, Grogan, and others go to visit the Conner site? ON a day when the water level was 6.39 feet above MLLW. The average higher high tide is 6.05 -- so that was well above average. The HH tide on the morning Conner was found was only 5.87, and the previous morning, during the storm, only 5.76. That's a huge difference for the Conner site. I suspect they did that intentionally, so they could convince the jurors that the Conner site floods with water at every high tide. A blatant lie!
Why didn't they choose a day when the HH tide was predicted to be 5.87? or even 6.05? Because that would expose the truth, and this trial was not about truth.
