Thursday's Surf - New Tropical S-SE swell

Wednesday's surf was pretty small throughout most of SoCal...the little SW swell and the windswell mix didn't really produce all that well...a lot of spots were in that ankle-knee high range. A few of the better-exposed breaks in South OC and North SD had some chest high sets but they were few and far between.

Fortunately it does look like we will have a few more waves moving in on Thursday...unfortunately this new swell is coming in from a pretty steep SE'erly swell angle, which really cuts down on the exposed breaks. I drew an ugly little map that sort of gives you a visual of what I am talking about...



The red line is the SE edge of the SoCal swell window...it is drawn down from the OC area (which has one of the most open SE swell angles) down to the Baja "Spur"...which eliminates most of San Diego and even parts of South Orange County.

I also drew (that being a relative term for my crappy mapwork...man my old college advisors would be shaking their heads at how low this map takes my cartography skills) the shadowing that the rest of SoCal gets from the nearshore islands (Catalina, San Clemente, and the Channel Islands). You can see a couple of gaps hitting North LA and Southern Ventura County but even those areas will see the swell get knocked down a bunch comparatively to the more exposed breaks.

Now that you have a little back-story...I do think Thursday will be a surf day but only in select areas with exposure to the SE swell, namely North and Central Orange County.

Swellwise we are going to have a mix of tropical SE swell (that will gradually turn into more of a S swell, which is a reflection of Hurricane Elida's movement through our swell windown)...along with some leftover SW energy, and local windswell. Most spots will continue to see the ankle-knee-waist high surf that we saw on Wednesday. Spots with some SE exposure will be in the waist-chest high range. Standout SE facing spots in North OC will see chest-shoulder high sets.

Winds look nice and light again in the morning...so look for clean conditions early. W winds around 10-15 knots move in through the afternoon.

I don't think it will be worth driving very far for this swell...worth checking on the cameras? Sure, but not hopping into the car without a little visual confirmation. The swell will strengthen and turn more southerly as we move into the afternoon (and more into Friday)...so it is worth keeping an eye on it throughout the day as well. If you are close to North OC I would give the good SE facing spots a check if you see something you like on the cameras.

Random Note: I was just kidding about pulling the plug on the blog and going to Mexico...I actually just meant that I would go surfing in Mexico on this next S swell and then return to my incredible long-rambling blog posts rather than update over the weekend...sorry for the confusion.