Thursday’s Surf – Bigger SW swell starts to arrive...yeah for swell.

Thursday will be another good surf day…particularly for the S-SW facing spots and good combo breaks.

New S-SW swell (185-210) will start to arrive with long-period energy (20+ seconds) early Thursday morning and will blend in with the already existing mix of SW and WNW energy. Exposed areas can expect consistent chest-shoulder high+ surf through the morning while the standouts start seeing some head high+ sets as we move past the morning low tide.

Definitely expect bigger and more consistent surf to arrive as we head into the afternoon…and remember that the peak of the swell will actually be arriving on Friday.

About the only thing that I am a little concerned about is that there could be some wind issues on Thursday. Winds are getting strong in the outer waters and there is a chance that they will edge over SoCal tweaking our conditions.

Likely what will happen is that these winds will set up a bit of an eddy that will keep the stronger NW flow from tearing us up…but it does mean that we may have some mild-moderate southerly flow coming through in the morning…particularly for San Diego and Orange County. (LA, Ventura, and Santa Barbara will be more under the influence of the NW flow).

This image is actually the current wind pattern that we are seeing this afternoon (Wednesday around 3pm) but it may stay consistent overnight and into tomorrow morning.



There will still be some decent size differences between regions so I will break them out again so you can plan your session better…

Santa Barbara will continue to be shadowed from this swell mix. Expect more knee-waist high+ surf for the better breaks…and maybe a few chest high+ sets at the absolute best summer breaks.

Ventura pulls in more of the swell but is still on the shadowed side. South County breaks are way more exposed and will pick up more of the WNW energy as well. Most breaks will be around waist-chest high+ but the South County standouts will have shoulder-head high sets as the SW’er gets more established in the afternoon.

LA County will have a lot of fun surf at the exposed areas…northern LA and the north half of the South Bay will be the biggest with chest-shoulder high surf for the average spots and some head high+ sets hitting the standout combo breaks.

Orange County and San Diego County will continue to see the biggest surf. Expect most S facing breaks to be in the shoulder-head high range with sets starting to go overhead on the tide push in the morning and getting more consistently overhead by the evening. I am not sure there will be enough WNW swell to break up the bigger S swell (cross your fingers that the windswell picks up a couple of notches)…so point and reefs may be your best call for shape…remember too that we may have S winds in the morning so look for spots with a little more protection from the wind.

Personally I am locked into surfing North OC tomorrow…so I am hoping extra hard for a little more windswell and a lot less eddy winds in the morning so that the surf will be a bit more peaky at the beach breaks. At this point I am not holding my breath that it will happen…but I am going to do a little wind dance later this evening to see if I can help stack the deck a little bit.