Thursday, January 8, 2009

Waves for Friday – new WNW-NW swell

Friday will be a surf day...it will start off a bit slow for the morning but it will be pretty fun by lunchtime and into the afternoon.

Thursday wasn’t as good as I was hoping...the first WNW pulse dropped out pretty fast (actually it was still in the water but it got really steep...290+...really around 295+...on the swell direction which, since the swell period was a bit short really limited the spots that could pull it in). Anyway I took a look at it for a while during lunch and while there were a bunch of guys out it wasn’t appealing enough to motivate me. Check out the CDIP model from this afternoon...you can see how the swell shadow kinda screwed us today. Well except for San Diego, which has better winter exposure.



Friday the new WNW’er (280-300 with the main push of energy around 290-300) will arrive throughout the day...show strongest in the afternoon and then peak overnight in Saturday.

Average spots will start off slow...around knee-waist high...and soft thanks to the building tide.

Standout breaks, mostly those in San Diego, will be bigger in the morning...more around waist-chest high+ on inconsistent sets but burgery with the higher tide.

By the afternoon the average WNW spots should be more consistently around chest-shoulder high. The top spots will be around shoulder-head high with some bigger sets as the sun sets.

Winds will be light-variable to light-offshore in the morning. Look for NW winds around 10-12 knots for mid-afternoon with the possibility of a little sundown cleanup as things shift back around at the end of the day.

Really I would plan to take it easy in the morning and shoot for a midday session if you can...if not, well expect things to be on the softer side during the dawn patrol. San Diego and Southern Ventura will be the biggest on the new swell mix but there should be playful waves at all of the exposed spots as the tide drops. Also some of the more northern spots in SoCal will see that new swell a few hours earlier than spots further south...so if you are in the Ventura/SB keep an eye on the ocean around lunch...there should be some bigger sets coming through.

Here are the tides

12:36AM LST 2.1 L
06:50AM LST 6.7 H
02:24PM LST -1.7 L
08:49PM LST 3.7 H

Thanks for all the responses to the “Bootie Stank” post this morning...you guys are freaking funny (and have a bunch of good tips!)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Just out of the water on the northside. It started blowing offshore about 2:30 and it turned out nice. I like surfing. Tastes good.