Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Waves for Wednesday – windswell combo continues

Wednesday looks like a surf day…again the shape won’t be great but conditions will be good and the there will be some rideable swell in the water.

We are going to see a mix of WNW-NW windswell, some small SW energy (200-220), and a little bit of WNW energy (290-300). It will look a little like this…just smaller.



Average spots will be in the waist high range with some inconsistent chest high sets at the better exposed areas, particularly the more fun combo beaches. The top spots, mostly through San Diego, will have some chest-shoulder high sets, which will be primarily off the windswell…so even though it will have more size it will still be a little crossed up and a bit burgery, particularly on the higher morning tides.

Winds look good…mostly light and variable to light offshore for the morning…and then W 10-14 knots by the afternoon. Should be a little chilly for the dawn patrol but be a nice day after the sun gets out and warms things up a bit.

I would plan on bringing your boards that like windswell tomorrow…something that can overcome the higher morning tide and the semi-soft nature of fading windswell…probably a fishy shape…or something will a little girth (that’s what she said). Definitely going to see bigger sizes in SD just because it is exposed to the steeper windswell energy, but there may be a few bigger sets around Ventura and the South Bay at times…and even though those spots have size it won’t be worth burning some gas to get to them.

Here are the tides…

03:09AM LDT 0.5 L
09:03AM LDT 4.8 H
03:22PM LDT 0.1 L
09:24PM LDT 4.9 H

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And you feel that made up position is important?

Anonymous said...

thanks, Adam.

Anonymous said...

Adam, any thoughts on what it might be like for say, an 8-5'er that's looking to get a sunset session in??(provided it looks worth it)

Anonymous said...

Can you explain what is meant by a steep swell?

Unknown said...

steep swell...is a term that I usually use to describe a swell that is on the edge of our swell window.

As the swells start to move into the extreme NW or SE swell angles more and more spots start to get shadowed. So a "steep" NW swell many only send rideable waves to a handful of exposed spots. The steeper the swell gets the fewer the breaks that will be able to pull it in.

does that make sense?

Anonymous said...

Thanks! I also heard some surfers in the water talking about steep swell, and I was wondering if they meant the actual *waves* were steep, or if they were talking about swell direction.

Guess that clears it up then...it's the direction