Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Thursday’s Surf – Peaking S swell with a touch of eddy

Thursday is looking like a surf day...but thanks to eddy winds you might have to hunt around for a truly clean spot.

The S swell (180-210) is filling in nicely this afternoon...plenty of energy showing on the buoys with lots of it in the 20-second period range. Check it out.




The swell will actually peak closer to 15-17 seconds...so there is still some more energy on its way in. We are also going to see some slowly building local windswell but I don’t think it is going to help to break up the S swell all that much.

For Thursday look for the average exposed S-facing breaks to see surf in the chest-shoulder high range with some head high sets. Standout S-swell spots, mostly through Orange County, San Diego, and a few parts of North LA, will have more consistent shoulder-head high surf with overhead sets mixing in as well. OC and SD will have some bigger sets on the lower tides...but only at select spots that can really focus the longer-period S swell.

I think winds are going to be an issue...the forecast has some building winds in the outer waters, as well as a couple of weak low-pressure that move through our region over the next couple of days. This set up obviously cooled off the beach temps and spun up the eddy/marine layer on Wednesday...and it is expected to do similar things on Thursday. At this point I think that there will be variable winds in the morning...and a little bit of southerly flow for OC and SD...but if you have a spot with high-cliffs, kelp, or something to block the winds it should be ok.

Here are the winds for the morning...

Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles


Orange County and San Diego


I think the points/reefs are going to be the call tomorrow...the beach breaks are going to pretty walled up unless you have a pier/jetty/huge-ass-sandbar to break up the S-swell lines. Unfortunately that also means there is going to be plenty of current at the exposed spots too...so expect to do some paddling tomorrow in some areas. The tide is also high in the morning (man can’t anything go our way) so you will have to work around that as well.

While winds don’t improve a ton later this week (and weekend) it does look like more windswell will work its way into SoCal...hopefully we will see the beach breaks open up a bit more as it starts to cross things up. Check out the sideways CDIP forecast for the next few days.



Here are the tides...

02:54AM LDT -0.1 L
08:52AM LDT 4.1 H
02:35PM LDT 0.9 L
08:39PM LDT 5.6 H

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I froze my ass off walking out to check the surf this afternoon, but I saw a couple of good sandbars that might be able to handle the lined-up swell.

The current already looks tough, though. It's both a bane & benefit, however, since it serves to weed out the weaklings and/or clueless who don't know how to stay in position.

'Course, a lot of guys who hit it everyday, regardless of conditions (oh, how I too remember surf fever), never seem to be comfortable when the crowd increases in conjunction with wave size/quality.

There's a reason the best spots are crowded - it's better to get a few good waves at a good spot rather than settle for a bunch of waves at a crappy spot that never quite puts it all together (flat take-offs, warbly energy, weird sections, etc).

Some places that spring immediately to mind that fit in the 'funky' category, include, but are not limited to, County Line, Zeroes, Topanga, Sunset, anyplace in PV, Bolsa, HB Cliffs (actually, anyplace north of 9th St), anyplace in Laguna, Sano without a longboard, N SD county besides O-side, etc.

The good spots are the ones located by the weird spots listed above. They usually have a few hundred people out, with the resident hotties & visiting pros taking all the nuggets.

Anonymous said...

There are some spots in Laguna that fire off. You just have to be there at the right time, right swell.

Declan X said...

Please stay at the crowded spots! I'll keep the funky little waves. lol

Anonymous said...

Between Point M navy bass and Leo C there are some spots that will be perfect tomorrow, but don't all you surfers tell anyone about it if you get it good. HAHA

Anonymous said...

shut up about the north la spots!!! Shits crowded enough!!