DANGEROUS SEAS A BIG DRAW.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - Gale warnings. Twenty-five-foot breakers. Sideways rain in sheets.

Sounds like a day at the beach - at least for one hardy (or foolhardy) cult of Oregon Coast residents.

As the coast's rugged winter socks the shoreline with its last few blasts of weather, the popular but dangerous sport of storm-watching persists, to the chagrin of weather experts.

And Tuesday was a heck of a day for it. At the Florence North Jetty, a steady stream of cars, pickup trucks and SUVs rumbled through the rain-filled potholes to get a glimpse of a nasty shoreline - Mother Nature at her meanest.

Giant waves hammered the defenseless clusters of rock, sending a frothing mixture of water and sand into the sky. At high tide, the seas hurled logs as thick as telephone poles onto the shore, the water spilling well past the beach grass toward the parking lot.

The big seas followed a low pressure system that rolled in Monday from the eastern Pacific Ocean, said meteorologist Tyree Wilde of the National Weather Service in Portland.

Winds of 75 mph blew over the open ocean Monday night, generating swells as high as 39 feet, he said. As the water reached shallower depths, the waves receded a bit - but when combined with Tuesday morning's gale warning, storm-watching was in top form.

The sensible spectators remained in their cars, snapping photos of the salty carnage through a rolled-down window.

"We checked online to see when the tide was," said Marilyn Barnard of Florence, as her Jack Russell terrier, Jackson, dozed in the back seat. "It's so breathtaking: the power of nature."

"Look at that," she said, as a swell burst into the air in the foreground. "Right over that jetty."

Paul and Opal Benasco head to the North Jetty two or three times a week from their home on the North Fork of the Siuslaw River.

"We'll go to McDonald's, get a piece of pie and some coffee and sit and watch the waves," Paul Benasco said.

But the true aficionados head into the thick of it.

Wearing jeans and a fleece jacket, Jack Scofield of San Francisco stared down breakers at the jetty as if to settle a score, fearlessly immobile as the surf crashed around him.

In the end, the ocean won out, surging up to his waist. The former Eugene resident was soaked.

"I thought: `This is probably pretty safe,' ' Scofield said, after retrieving his cowboy hat, snatched by the wind twice. `Then `Whoosh!' It was cold.'

Florence's Bill Helger stayed a bit farther back, remembering "I almost got caught in it once." But he couldn't keep away entirely. "It's just amazing to look at. So powerful."

Too powerful, warned Robert Smith, beach safety coordinator for the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation. While he didn't discourage people from storm-watching, he repeated his safety mantra: Never underestimate the ocean - even if you think spring is right around the corner.

"March is the deadliest month on record," Smith said. "Eight of the 33 deaths we've had since 1990 occurred in March."

Most of those were children, he added.

Last November, Smith formed the Oregon Beach Safety Council, a group of experts and advocates from various parts of the community to develop ways to educate the public about the danger of rogue waves and flying logs.

The council is planning a beach safety week to coincide with spring break, and the Newport Fire Department will drive donated all-terrain vehicles up the beach to talk with people about safety issues.

"It's about underestimating the power of the ocean," Smith said. "It's about not realizing that 4 inches of water can move a 5-ton log.

"We've got plenty of 18- and 19-year-olds who want to go out and stand in the waves, feel them break around them, not realizing that a cubic yard of seawater weighs nearly one ton, and can travel between 15 and 17 miles per hour."

If the Coast Guard had spotted Scofield on the jetty Tuesday, an officer would have urged him back, said bosun mate Chris Hinote.

"All it takes is one wave to come over those jetties," he said, noting that even the Coast Guard's 47-foot motor lifeboat doesn't get into the water when the swells top 20 feet - even if someone gets swept into the water.

"We'd have to wait for a helicopter from Newport or Coos Bay."

Which is why there's nothing wrong with remaining in the car.

"The Pacific Ocean is probably one of the most poorly named," Smith mused. "There's nothing pacifist about it."

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or [e-mail].

STORM-WATCHING 101

It takes the perfect combination of factors to make for an ideal day of storm-watching on the Oregon Coast.

Weather: Big swells, high winds and high tide can converge.

Good spots: In Florence, the North and South jetties. For a better show, head toward areas with big rock formations, such as Cape Perpetua, the Heceta Head Lighthouse, Yachats, Shore Acres State Park near Charleston and the Bandon Jetty.

Safety: Don't turn your back on the ocean. It can sneak up on you. Watch out for logs, which can flip with little warning. Pay attention to signs noting closures by park personnel. Avoid the surf zone by checking out the water from higher ground.

How to know when it's rockin': Check the National Weather Service Web site at www.wrh.noaa.gov/portland. To play with the service's new digital data, try www.weather.gov/ndfd. To check Florence, call the Coast Guard at [phone].

CAPTION(S):

Mike Sparks and his daughter, Amanda, of Elmira struggle against the high winds Tuesday at Devils Elbow State Park, at Heceta Head north of Florence. Big winter storms bring many weather fans to the beach, but safety experts urge caution.