Tide swamp, building onshore winds, and sort of walled up shape at the beach breaks…you know…the usual problems you have on SSW swells.
Our new SSW-SW (185-205) was just starting to fill in on Thursday…and it will continue to fill in more on Friday, eventually peaking on Saturday. We are also going to see a bit of WNW energy trying to leak around the corner…but most of it is pretty NW and above the 300-degree shadow. Hopefully (and I am not real optimistic) we will have enough background WNW-NW energy from the mix of medium-period and windswell that it will break up the SSW’er.
Check out the Dana Point buoy this afternoon. (I made sure to put my professional opinion of new swell on the image…man I should make art for a living).
On Friday we can expect the average spots to see surf in the waist-chest high+ range with some shoulder high sets.
Standout spots in Orange County and North San Diego will have more consistent surf in the chest-shoulder high range with some head high sets slipping through at the top breaks.
Winds look decent in the morning. Mostly light and variable with some light texture here and there. Onshore breezes pick up around 10-14 knots out of the W. Here is a shot of the winds about 7-8am tomorrow.
I would expect sort of a slow start in the morning…the tide is going to peak with a 5’+ high around 8-9am and that is going to burger out a lot of spots. You might be able to get a few fun waves before the high tide peaks but you are going to be rolling the dice if head to a spot that “has” to have a low tide. I am expecting the points and reefs to have the best shape on Friday…the better sandbars that can handle a little higher tide might be a good fallback but I would still watch out for wally shape. I don’t think it will be worth burning a lot of gas...so try and stick with your local S swell spots. (and if you live in Santa Barbara do some sort of magic wave dance to see if you can get some of the NW swell to sneak around the corner. Yeah good luck with that.)
Here are the tides for Friday.
02:02AM -0.3’ Low
08:17AM 4.9’ High
02:06PM 1.2’ Low
07:57PM 5.7’ High
4 comments:
Can you elaborate on the "300 degree shadow"?
is santa barbara suppose to be flat all throughout the summer?
i m planning to go there for grad school but seeing how flat it gets all the time it's making me hestitate to go or not.
Santa Barbara is always flat. You should reconsider
Nice John Madden drawing....Thanks for the post today. BTW I click on several ads for some $
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