For years, San Diegans near our southern beaches have learned to treat the Pacific with suspicion. On a day when the water looks inviting, invisible pathogens may be drifting north from Tijuana, where a water treatment plant struggles to contain its outflow. … But oceanographers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have devised a way to tip the odds. The new Pathogen Forecast Model translates the complexity of oceanic physics (currents, winds, tides, waves) into something as simple as a weather report. … The new model can project, up to five days in advance, where contaminated water is likely to travel and how risky it might be to take a swim at various San Diego beaches.

Other Tijuana River sewage news:

• FOX5 (San Diego): Sewage release closes ocean water in North Beach & Coronado Dog Beach