The claim, as broadcast
On 12 September 2026, ABC7 Los Angeles (@abc7la) posted a segment naming a researcher on screen as "Dillon Amaya, Professor, Researcher." The claim: a Kelvin wave — a large-scale wave riding the equatorial Pacific, tied to the El Niño now loading — is expected to reach the California coast within a month and raise sea levels by 6 to 12 inches. The same day, the Los Angeles Times headlined its own report on the story a "'pretty epic' Kelvin wave," naming it the latest threat to SoCal coastal cities.
This is REPORTED, not verified by AYON: the broadcast is the source for Amaya's name and title exactly as shown, and for the 6–12 inch figure and the one-month timeline. AYON could not independently confirm his institutional affiliation or read the Los Angeles Times report in full before this was written — an honest gap, stated rather than papered over.
What we checked before writing anything
The nearest instrument to the claim is a public one: NOAA's CO-OPS tide gauge network. Newport Beach is also where this program already stood on the sand once, for the Hurricane Marie field note published 7 September 2026 — the natural place to keep watching.
The first finding was a limitation, not a result: station 9410580, Newport Bay Entrance, is a harmonic prediction station only — it publishes a predicted tide from offsets applied to a nearby control station, but has no real-time water-level sensor. It cannot show what the sea is actually doing right now, only what the moon says it should be doing. The nearest station that measures the real thing is 9410660, Los Angeles Outer Harbor, about 30 km northwest — the gauge used for everything that follows.
What the gauge already shows
For 7–14 September 2026, AYON pulled both products NOAA publishes for station 9410660: the observed water level and the predicted astronomical tide, both in the MLLW datum, at six-minute resolution. The difference — observed minus predicted — is the residual: whatever the moon does not explain. Over that week the residual averaged +0.247 m (about 9.7 in) above the predicted tide, never dropping below +0.14 m.
A raw residual conflates two things: the ordinary seasonal cycle (Southern California sea level runs higher in September than in January in any normal year, from summer thermal expansion alone) and anything unusual this particular September. To separate them, AYON pulled the identical week one year earlier, 7–14 September 2025, at the same station, same method. That week's residual averaged +0.045 m (about 1.8 in) — essentially the seasonal baseline. The year-over-year gap is about +0.20 m, roughly 8 inches, already present before the broadcast's one-month clock has run out.
NOAA's own published monthly means at the same station tell the same story from a different angle: mean sea level (MSL datum) sat flat around 0.045–0.069 m from January through May 2026, then rose to 0.116 m in June, 0.168 m in July, and 0.209 m in August — an accelerating climb, in NOAA's own official numbers, months before this broadcast aired.
What this measurement does and does not show
This is a real, dated, independently reproducible measurement — not a model output. What it does not do is assign a cause. A year-over-year comparison at one station removes the astronomical tide and the ordinary seasonal cycle far better than a same-year residual would, but it cannot by itself separate an approaching Kelvin wave from other year-to-year variability: local barometric pressure, wind setup, or the slower trend of sea-level rise itself. The honest reading is that Southern California's coastal water is measurably higher right now than it was the same week last year — and that whatever the broadcast's Kelvin wave adds in October lands on top of an already-elevated baseline, not a normal one.
The locked call
Frozen here, before the event: as of 14 September 2026, the LA Outer Harbor residual stands at +0.247 m (about 9.7 in) above the predicted tide, roughly 8 in above the same week in 2025. The broadcast's claim is 6 to 12 additional inches within a month of 12 September — a window closing 31 October 2026.
This will be scored, not restated: when the window closes, AYON will pull the same NOAA product at the same station and check whether the residual has risen further, and by how much, against both the 6–12 in claim and today's already-elevated baseline. The result — hit, miss, or not-scored if the instrument or the method fails — gets published here in place, in both directions, the same as every other call this program has made.
- 6–12 in additional sea-level rise at SoCal, within a month of the 12 Sep 2026 broadcastNot scored
- Called
- Named on-air by Dillon Amaya, ABC7 LA, 12 September 2026
- Status
- Not yet — window closes 31 October 2026. Baseline at lock: LA Outer Harbor residual +0.247 m (≈9.7 in) above predicted tide, ≈8 in above the same week in 2025.
What we don't know yet
Three gaps, stated rather than filled with guesses: Dillon Amaya's exact institutional affiliation and credentials are unverified by AYON as of this writing — the broadcast's own on-screen title is quoted, nothing more is claimed. Copernicus Marine's sea-surface-height-anomaly product, which would show the Kelvin wave crossing the Pacific before it arrives rather than after, has not yet been pulled for this article — the natural next step. And Newport Beach itself still has no real-time gauge; every number here is a 30 km proxy, declared as such, not hidden.
This is research. Estimates are models, not guarantees; a model is never an observation, and a machine estimate is never “confirmed” — only a human reviewing it in the field makes it verified. Nothing on this page is an operational-capability claim, a safety promise, or a prediction of a specific event at a specific place.
References & data
- 1.ABC7 Los Angeles (@abc7la), Instagram — REPORTED source for the claim, Amaya's on-screen name and title, and the 6–12 in / one-month figures. Posted 12 September 2026.
- 2.Los Angeles Times — Headlined the same story a "'pretty epic' Kelvin wave"; the full report was not read by AYON before this was written.
- 3.NOAA CO-OPS station 9410660 — Los Angeles (Outer Harbor) — MEASURED source for observed water level, predicted tide, and monthly-mean MSL; the nearest continuously-operating gauge to Newport Beach.
- 4.NOAA CO-OPS station 9410580 — Newport Bay Entrance — Prediction-only harmonic station, no real-time sensor — the declared limitation that sent this reconnaissance to LA Outer Harbor instead.
- 5.NOAA Climate Prediction Center — The same El Niño outlook this program already cited in the August–September 2026 window analysis — the backdrop this claim sits against.