Swash zone characteristics at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA

Runup data collected during the summer of 2005 at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, CA are analyzed and considered to be typical summer swash characteristics at this site. Analysis shows that the beach was dissipative with Iribarren numbers between 0.05 and 0.4 and that infragravity energy dominated. Foreshore slopes were mild between 0.01 and 0.05 with swash periods on the order of a minute. Predicted runup heights obtained with six previously developed analytical runup formulae were compared to measured extreme runup statistics. Formulations dependent on offshore wave height, foreshore slope and deep water wavelength gave reasonable results.