Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Thursday’s Surf – still a bit fugly

The swell mix is going to continue into Thursday but weather is still a bit funky…there will be waves but it still won’t be a good surf day.

In the water we are going to have a mix of WNW swell, both medium and short-period…sort of mix of windswell and some storm swell, and some background SW swell (195-220). The outer buoys are showing some good numbers right now but that WNW swell (300+) is coming in pretty steep…mostly well over the 300-degree shadow. Check out the San Nicolas Buoy…



Most W facing spots and the average combo breaks are going to see surf in the chest-shoulder high range. Standout NW facing spots and the excellent combo spots, mostly in San Diego, will have some shoulder-head high sets…and maybe a few overhead waves at times.

Winds and weather are where we get tripped up again…there are basically 2 cold fronts moving through the area. One is heading through tonight, it is almost past us at this point, but the other one moves through later on Thursday and early Friday. So tomorrows dawn patrol sort of slips in between, which means that winds won’t be horrible…but they also won’t be very stable…and any semi-surfable conditions that we see in the morning won’t last long. So for tomorrow I am expecting variable onshore winds, again in the 5-8 knot, but they are going to vary by the region. Santa Barbara and Ventura will have more onshore flow, the South Bay should be lighter, and SD and OC will be sort of pick and choose. If you have something to block the winds in those areas it will be a better choice than the wide open spots.

Personally I am going to be checking it on the cams in the morning…I am not really ready to commit a lot of time to these type of conditions. But if you live close to the beach it might be worth a quick drive-by of the beach if winds look light at your house.

03:22AM LST 4.9 H
11:34AM LST -0.4 L
06:32PM LST 3.2 H
10:39PM LST 2.5 L

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's it! I am getting drunk tonight. Tired of staying sober and the conditions suck in the early morning!

Anonymous said...

Drink away, my good man. Drink away. The Ocean has betrayed us!