Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Tropical Storm Fausto - Potential Wave Maker

Man I think we should go back to naming storms after the wives and girlfriends of the forecasters in the National Hurricane Center...Fausto is sort of a lame storm name. Better yet we should just name them after swear words...this one could be Tropical Storm Mother F-er or something. You have to admit that you would pay a lot closer attention to a Hurricane Asskicker than to a Fausto. (yeah I know I got some issues)

Anyway TS Fausto formed up here on Wednesday and is forecast to strengthen as it tracks to the WNW at around 13-14 knots.

Current forecasts have Fausto nearing Hurricane strength, possibly becoming a hurricane, somewhere late on Friday or early Saturday, which is also when they have the storm moving into the SoCal SE swell window.

So there is potential for Fausto to be a wave-maker but there are still a couple of days of development before that becomes reality.

It is in a better position to send waves to the Tip of Baja...and as it strengthens it likely will send in some building SE swell into the exposed breaks. At this point I would expect those waves to arrive on Saturday, peak on Sunday/Monday and then fade out. There will be a bigger S swell from the Southern Hemi hitting right around that time so it might be a good time to roll the dice for a trip.

Here is the latest NHC forecast for Fausto



And here is the latest Sat Pic from the NRL.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll take the so hemi w/out hurricane swell crossing it up anyday. Looks like I made a good call not heading south. Adam why are we having so much epac tropical activity?
Thanks , Coconutz!

Unknown said...

Yeah that is probably a good call on the swell combo...some spots it could be ok...but most, with the storm that close, would be a bit disorganized.

The tropics really have sprung to life the last couple of weeks thanks mostly to the atmospheric conditions...the N/EPAC high-pressure, the semi-permanent high-pressure in the North Pacific, has been staying well north, and is centered basically in the Gulf of Alaska. This has left the wind gradients through the tropics relatively light...allowing more localized convective lifting and storm circulation without the upper level shear that usually disrupts or stunts the storm development. The lighter winds actually have a second effect as well...warm water temps have started to extend further out towards the central pacific...in particular the warmer water next to the tip of Baja (and a bit further west)...usually the winds of the N/EPAC high drive cold water down the coast of Baja and mix it with the tropical water...without that cooling effect there is a lot more latent heat energy for the tropical systems to feed off.

Likely we are going to see a couple more weeks with decent tropical activity and then the high-pressure will get repositioned and start up the more normal wind patterns. After a couple of weeks of downtime after that we will see the tropics stir back up.

I did notice a could of tropical waves (the weather kind not the actual swell) moving into the Southern Caribbean...likely these are going to jump over Central America and develop into something on our side. Worth keeping an eye on at least.

Anonymous said...

two hurricanes! Can we do the '92 repeat with three of those wavemakers swirling about at the same time?