page by Harold Marcuse

created Dec. 14, 2009; updated 3/24/18

Introduction (back to top)

• Update 3/24/2018:
  2018: March 22 (we had about 4" of rain in the past 2 days; didn't breach during Montecito mudslide rain of Jan. 9, nor after 1" rainstorm in Feb.
  2017: Jan. 9 (see Jan. 10, 2017 KEYT story)
  2016: Jan. 6, after about 3.25" of rain locally, and more in foothills draining into slough
  2015: no breach at all--just drought!
  2014: March 1, bone dry before, then .4" and 3.4" of rain
  2013: Dec. 29, 2012
  2012: Jan. 22 (closed on Feb. 18)
  2011:
  2010: Dec. 19, after 3" rain in 48 hours (1:16min video, same day, hours later)
  2009: Feb. 16
  2006: Jan.

For 17 years I've waited to see the Devereux slough, near where I live, breach into the ocean. I've seen it fill and empty many times and always wondered what it looked like when the sand berm holding the water in breached into the ocean after the first heavy downpours of the rainy season. In February 2009 I came close--saw it full at 11am and empty around 4pm--but I wasn't there to witness the actual event.

This year (Dec. 2009) I got lucky. Returning from a walk on a Sunday afternoon after a rainy weekend (about 2" of rain fell since Thursday), during which I had taken my camera "just in case," I arrived at the breach about 5-10 minutes after it started flowing into the ocean, which we'll say was 4:36pm. (It's hard to say when the tiny trickle overflowing the top will start to cut in and become a breach.) The photos and video clips below document the event.

[note: in 2017 edhat revamped its site, and all older articles are no longer available, not even in the Internet Archive. Too bad! So many links below are all dead and gone.]
I reported this event on edhat.com, a local internet news site: see the Dec. 15, 2009 article with 11 user comments (including a response by me). It has some of the same pictures published below, with three more from the next day showing the view from above and birds in the exposed muck.

At the bottom of this page are some links to other pictures and videos of the Devereux slough, including a series of pictures CJ Bowdish took of the Feb. 2009 breach. The first breach of the (rainy) season is always the biggest, since it takes many high summer tides for the sand bank to build up a substantial height again.

PS. 12/23/09: The sandbar across the mouth of the breach is now high enough so that no more water is flowing out (although at high tide waves still break over the top and flow in). It was not yet closed on 12/18 (in fact, it was still flowing strongly enough that it couldn't be crossed at the surfline). I've added 2 video clips taken on Friday, 12/25/09.
PPS. 12/29/09: The sand bar across the slough mouth has built up substantially, and the slough is fairly full again--a good set-up for a second breach this season.

1/22/12: After one major storm in each of Oct. and Nov., there was essentially no rain in December until Jan. 20. The slough stayed full and breached today after filling from the continuing runoff.
On Feb. 11 or 12, after "king tides" the week before (Feb 6-7), and only .25@ of additional rain, the breach closed.

Jan. 30, 2013: Some heavy rain in early November, more inches in late December, and the slough breached around Dec. 29, 2012. The breach closed again during the high tides in mid-January (with one or no major rains in between). [monthly precip totals; download daily precipitaton history at weather warehouse; sb county's daily totals starting in 1952--click on .xls, then UCSB dot for a spreadsheet of daily precipitation totals]

March 1, 2014: We have been in a drought, with no rain Oct-Jan. After about 0.4" of rain a few weeks ago, it rained 1.7" on 2/25/14 and 1.7" on 2/28-3/1, which caused the first breach of the season. Thus I conclude that about 4-5 inches of rain can cause a breach. However there were also very high waves (15-20') at this time, with lots of seaweed washing far into the slough (even under the conduit under Slough Road along its edge.

2015: I don't think the slough breached at all this year--so little rain, it never really filled up.

Jan. 6, 2016: On Jan. 5 we had 2.25 inches of rain at the slough, and more in the hills that drain into it. In December we had maybe 1" of rain locally. Around 6pm on Jan. 5 a small rivulet was draining from the slough into the ocean. On Jan. 6 early in the day another 1" of rain fell, and by that afternoon the slough had breached. Conclusion: 3+ inches of rain on a basically empty slough (with higher accumulations in the hills draining into it) can bring the slough to breach. Jan. 10 is new moon, so the tides have been fairly high, and high waves had been washing over the berm prior to the breach. (There's also a fair amount of washed-in kelp left behind after the breach.)
1/10/16: It was still breached on Saturday (Jan. 9) evening, but already on Sunday morning, when the tide got up to 6.3 ft at 9am, the breach was closed again, with lots of water in the slough. It rained a small amount (<0.1") that day, so mostly from the drainage from the foothills the slough was quite full again on 1/11.

• Coal Oil Point Reserve official website, with a great view of the breached slough
• Google maps aerial view of the slough (this one is clickable & can be zoomed; see also the static captioned screenshot below )
  View Larger Map
• Technical data with history & size, at the Ceres Wetland Project
• more links at bottom of page

12 minutes after breaching (4:48 pm, just as I arrived)

15 minutes after breaching

15 minutes after breaching (2nd shot)
29 minutes after breaching

view out to sea, 32 minutes after breaching (platform Holly and a barge are visible)

Soon After the Breach Started: Video (back to top)

0:14 clip (#0) taken by someone on the other side of the breach,
shortly before I arrived on the scene

1:58 min clip (#1) started at 4:46pm, about 10 minutes after the breach began. (link)
(310 views on 12/30/09)

1:02 min clip (#2) started at 5:00pm, ca. 24 minutes after the breach began. (link; back to top)

0:47 min clip (#3) taken 31 mins. into the breach, at 5:07pm on Dec. 13, 2009 (link; back to top)

1:34 clip (#4) taken 24 hours after the breach: 4:51pm on Dec. 14, 2009 (link; back to top)

1:42 clip (#5), also made 24 hours later

0:30 clip (#6) of the breach seen from above, made 12 days later (link; back to top)

0:49 clip (#7) taken at the again-closed breach, 12 days later (link)
note that the bent iron fence poles visible in clip 5 are already completely buried under the sand bar

Links (back to top)

• The nearby West Campus homeowner's association maintains a page of links about nature in the area
• Slough North Shore Restoration Project, at the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project site, with a gallery of 137 photos, probably ca. 2003-04
• Jan 31, 2008 UCTV show about UCSB's Coal-Oil Point nature reserve, 29 mins.
  • The first segment is about the endangered snowy plovers; around min. 12 a cute clip of a newly hatched snowy plover chick
  • Min. 14 begins a segment about the PICSO interdisciplinary study of coastal oceans
  • Mins. 20-25 mins are on ocean current monitoring, and
  • Min.. 25:30 starts the final segment on the slough itself
• Dec. 6, 2008 picture of egrets and a swan at the slough, with beautiful reflections of the mountains, by Janis Johnson
  • Jan. 2009 picture of the swan who stayed resident at the slough for several months. After the Feb. breach it was seen at lake Los Carneros, and came back for a while when the Devereux slough filled up again.
• Jan. 2009 pictures of hummingbirds and owls in the nearby grove, by John Wiley
• Feb. 16, 2009: series of 43 pictures of slough breaching.
  • You can navigate through the full-size pics using the big numbers in the corners above the pictures (once you click on any photo on the index page).
  • Pix 12 through 45, esp. the 30s, are impressive.
  • Dec. 2005 "story" in pictures by the same photographer, Callie Bowdish. Many stunning pictures of the bird life, and one of Devereux creek overflowing the road before the bridge was built.
  • Another page of even more stunning pictures (including a breach), made in Jan. 2006
• Oct. 19, 2009 pictures of birds at the slough after a rainy day--so many!
  (Yes, these were taken by me.) The comments have additional links/pictures.
• Jan. 28, 1969: While we are talking videos of big marine events in Santa Barbara, this place is probably most widely known for the birth of the environmental movment (Earth Day) after the Jan./Feb. 1969 oil spill. These two videos document that spill:
  • Nov. 15, 1970 32 min. documentary (PBS/channel 13)
  • Oct. 11, 1970 29 min. documentary about the effects of pesticides (DDT) on Brown Pelicans off of Santa Barbara
  • both courtesy of this 4/30/09 BlogaBarbara post, published on edhat.
• Ventura County Watershed rainfall totals: an interactive map.
• Feb. 28, 2014 artificial breach at Goleta Beach slough (near SB airport): photos on edhat

:Later breaches (back to top)

1. The slough breached for the first time in the 2010 season on Dec. 19, 2010. I made a youtube clip (1:16) later in the day, around 4:45pm.
2. 2013/14 first breach of the season: March 1, 2014 after .4" a week ago and 3.4" in 3 days: 4.8". Devereux slough was essentially completely dry due to the drought before that.