Thursday’s Surf – Marginal but with a little more energy

Thursday isn’t looking like much of a surf day...

We will have a little more swell in the water from a couple of different sources but local winds are still pretty unstable. The winds didn’t do a very good job cleaning up this morning...there were a couple of rideable pockets but for the most part it was pretty sloppy. The current forecast has these winds continuing overnight, slowing down a touch in the morning, and then increasing again by Thursday afternoon, which needless to say is pretty lame.

Swellwise we are going to see a touch more energy in the water...local WNW-NW windswell is going to come up a couple of notches, we are going to have some longer-period NW energy (290-300 so it will be on the shadowed side), and there will be some slightly stronger SW swell (205-220) that pulses up in the background. The CDIP is showing a bit of the energy...but most of it is chop from the winds this afternoon so don’t get too excited.



For all of that activity it still looks like most of the average spots are going to hold around knee-waist high with some less consistent chest high sets sneaking through as the swells mix together. The standout combo spots and good NW facing breaks will have surf in the chest-high range fairly consistently and some bigger sets pushing through on the lower tides.

Winds are forecast to stay onshore overnight...but lighten up slightly for the morning. Right now it looks like we can expect WNW flow around 5-10 knots for the morning, lighter in some pockets around LA. It should have enough leftover chop that shape stays pretty funky into the dawn patrol. NW winds get back on the horse and come onshore around 10-15 knots by the afternoon.

With the winds, and the local windswell, holding into tomorrow I think that shape is going to be a bit ugly, particularly at the more open/exposed beaches. Even though there will be more size I expect to see those scattered, sort of sloppy, stacked up lines that you normally get with the shorter period swells. Personally I wouldn’t spend a lot of time checking it...maybe a cam check during the dawn patrol to see if the winds possibly laid down more than the forecast is calling for...but if it looks bumpy early don’t expect much of a clean up through the day.

Winds do look a little better by Friday and even cleaner by the weekend...there should be a little bit of swell still pushing through as well...so it looks a bit more surfable over the next couple of days.

Here are the tides for Thursday...

03:34AM LST 0.8 L
09:25AM LST 4.8 H
03:52PM LST 0.1 L
09:59PM LST 4.8 H