Friday, February 6, 2009

Waves for the Weekend – A few shots at surf and good dose of poo water

I don’t think this is going to be a “surf” weekend but...and it is a big but...if you keep your eyes on the weather and wind, you might get a few rideable waves sneaking through at the more wind-protected spots.

Overall I think it is going to be pretty junky with on and off S winds, rain, and some nasty leftover chop. Add in that the water quality is going to be totally shot to hell...and it doesn’t make for great sessions. (I usually mention this...but most Health Officials recommend avoiding ocean water contact for a period of at least 72 hours after a heavy rain has stopped). There will be enough instability in the local weather that there may be periods where winds lay down or even shift more E-ESE as portions of the storm pass...not anything we can count on...but worth watching if you don’t mind the water quality.

Swellwise we will have a mix of W energy (260-300) and SW windswell from the storm and a couple of other longer-range storms. Wave heights will stay consistently around chest-shoulder high for most W facing breaks. Standout W-NW facing spots will be in the shoulder-overhead range.

Winds and weather will be pretty shot for most of the really exposed beaches...particularly the open beach breaks...and it will be on and off clouds, periods of rain, and a couple of pockets of broken up sunshine throughout the weekend.

Check out the latest COAMPS for Saturday and Sunday morning. As you can see the winds are sort of all over the place...and while these look OK right now I expect the model to completely change as the next run is computed (that almost sounds dirty...I just computed in that port-o-potty...anyway I obviously need an alcoholic beverage at this point in the afternoon ).

Saturday morning



Sunday morning



I wish I had some better advice than “keep an eye on it” but really with these types of swells/storms that is sort of what you have to do to get good waves. I think you can maximize your chances by sticking with spots that are both exposed to the WNW and protected from the S winds (which will be the more dominant direction throughout the day). If you can’t pony up the white-blood cells to wade through all of the extra poo...well there is always snowboarding (plenty of new snow on the mountain).

Here are the tides...have a good one and stay safe, especially when driving around this weekend.

Saturday
12:41AM LST 1.8 L
06:46AM LST 6.3 H
02:08PM LST -1.5 L
08:28PM LST 4.0 H

Sunday
01:33AM LST 1.4 L
07:35AM LST 6.5 H
02:46PM LST -1.6 L
09:00PM LST 4.3 H

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

told you that old guy was right!

Anonymous said...

I surfed in poo and I liked it !