Friday, October 31, 2008

Waves for the weekend - Happy Halloween!

We are going to have some surf this weekend. The waves are already in the water but actual shape/conditions are going to depend a lot on the approaching cold front. Right now it looks like the storm is stalling out and won't be able to push as much wind/rain over SoCal as the earlier forecasts predicted...we may still get some weather Sunday and Monday but it looks a lot more rideable on Saturday.

Hopefully this storm will fizzle out completely before it gets to the SoCal coast and just let us have the surf without jacking up our winds and weather.



Oh by the way the Daylight Savings Time switch is this weekend...make sure to set your clocks (Saturday night at 2am!)

To make the forecast a little more clear I broke each day out into its own section.

Saturday's Surf - The new SW'er (190-210) will hold while WNW (280-300) energy begins to build. Most spots will push into the waist-chest high+ range. The standout SW facing spots and the good combo spots will have chest-head high sets through the morning and some potentially overhead sets by the afternoon.

Saturday's weather - Looks like we could get a surf window on Saturday...winds are expected to be light and variable through the morning and then stay on the light side (under 10-knots) through most of the afternoon. Hopefully it will be clean enough that we can finally get some halfway decent combo swell.

Sunday's Surf - The SW swell holds but a new pulse of W-WNW swell (270-300) starts to arrive. It will be showing pretty well in Santa Barbara and Ventura in the morning but won't really get going in LA, OC, and SD until late in the afternoon evening (it will peak in those areas overnight into Monday). Average spots will be in the chest-shoulder high+ range while the standout W facing breaks and the combo spots see overhead sets.

Sunday's Weather - Not as good as Saturday...W winds around 5-10 knots through the morning with some increasing clouds. W winds 10-20 knots by the afternoon with the potential for gusts topping out around 25 knots.


Saturday will likely be the best day...but not the biggest since the majority of the W-WNW swell arrives Sunday and Monday. Still there should be plenty of surf at the well exposed spots. San Diego will have the most size/consistency overall but there will be fun waves at most of the better combo spots throughout the other regions as well. I don't think that you will have to drive too far for surf, there will waves all over, but you may want to focus on spots that aren't super wind sensitive.

Sunday...well I am not ready to write off Sunday totally...but personally I am going to be keeping a "weather eye" on conditions around my house as well as the buoys and the cams...I am hoping that winds stay light through the morning, at least enough that we can get a few waves before the winds come up.

Here are the tides...

Saturday
12:14AM 3.4' High
04:13AM 2.7' Low
10:34AM 5.4' High
06:29PM 0.3' Low

Sunday
01:24AM 3.2' High
03:30AM 2.9' Low
10:07AM 5.1' High
06:24PM 0.6' Low

And finally have a great holiday tonight...Happy Halloween! Stay safe!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

so will sunday morning still have some west left over from saturday? you had mentioned that the Sunday swell dosen't start to show in SOuth of LA until later in the day... or will sunday morning be small than saturday morning?

thank.......sssssss

Yong Jung Shin said...

looks like the season first poo rain. yuck, i m out for at least 2 weak.

pushingtide said...

Wow these comments.

What happened to surfin'.