Thursday’s Surf – Get some while you can

Overall Thursday is looking much, much smaller than Wednesday. The W-WNW pulse will be dropping quick and will fade to a more playful size by late in the day. Expect overhead waves at most spots through the morning. Santa Barbara and Ventura will start to fade out by mid-morning…so expect the points/reefs to get quite a bit smaller through the afternoon. San Diego will have the most staying power and should see consistently overhead surf through most of the day.

Our weather will likely start to change on Thursday as well. A new cold front is approaching and is expected to bring bad weather to SoCal on Friday and Saturday. Thursday is expected to start off with light S-SE winds around 0-10 knots…then shift more S-SW 10-20 knots by the afternoon/evening. Rain (and waterspouts according to the National Weather Service) are expected on Friday and Saturday.

Surfwise…if you are looking to surf “big” waves on Thursday you will have pretty much missed the boat. There will still be some overhead stuff at the well exposed breaks through the morning but it will drop to more manageable sizes by the afternoon. Personally I would get on it early for the dawn patrol…conditions look like they fall apart by the afternoon/evening and then stay pretty bad through the weekend.

Long-range…forecasts last week were showing another decent sized swell for this upcoming weekend…unfortunately that is no longer the case. It looks like the storm will move over SoCal before generating much surf…so we will get the bad weather without the benefit of the waves beforehand. We can expect some bumpy and blown out storm swell driving up wave heights on Saturday (and then dropping Sunday) but not much of it will be rideable and water quality will be questionable as well.