Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Waves for Wednesday – mid-week mess

Wednesday is not looking like a surf day.

We will actually have a mix of new swell hitting on Wednesday but coastal winds are going to be pretty unstable (aka…bad) thanks to a passing cold front. In the water we are going to have a mix of early weak leftovers, new S-SW swell (190-210), and building WNW-NW energy (285-300) in the form of medium period swell along with increasing local windswell.



Wave heights are going hold in the waist-chest high range for many of the avereage exposed spots. Standout S-SW facing breaks, good NW windswell spots, and the top combo spots, will be in the chest-shoulder high range…and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some bigger sets mixing in on the lower tides.

Unfortunately shape doesn’t look great…onshore winds are expected to continue blowing overnight and will likely set up a funky eddy in the morning. At this point it looks like onshore W winds around 5-10 knots blowing through most of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties. Orange County and San Diego will be more SW’erly…and a touch lighter…more 5-8 knots through the early mornign. Onshore flow is expected to increase out of the W around 12-18 knots by the afternoon. I am posting the early morning COAMPS model below…but I think that it is being a bit optimistic on the slight side/offshore flow that it is showing along the coast…chances are that even if winds switch around for an hour+ in the mornign it won’t be enough to groom out the bump set up by tonights winds.



I don’t think that it will be worth investing much time in the surf tomorrow…mostly because of the wind. I definitely wouldn’t plan on driving very far to check it. I would however give it a quick look (if you live close) or a quick cam-check (if you don’t live close)…just to see how the winds unroll tonight…we might see some small pockets of surfyness at the more protected spots.

Here are the tides…

01:51AM LDT 0.5 L
08:05AM LDT 4.5 H
01:53PM LDT 1.7 L
07:39PM LDT 5.0 H

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adam: what do you think about the Tsunami Advisory? http://www.knx1070.com/Tsunami-Advisory-Issued-for-CA-Coastline/5327529

Unknown said...

In the past I wouldn't have been to worried about it...mostly because Southern California doesn't really have the best topography (and bathemetry) to focus and amplify tsunamis.

But after seeing what happened in Southeast Asia...I think that it is a prudent call on NOAA/USGS to at least alert the public on the potential.

I am going to throw a post up on the site with some of the forecast data shortly.

namotuman said...

sadly, the salani surf resort was hit pretty bad. they recognized the water level drop soon enough to evacuate the resort. word is the villages may have had some bad damage.....

Declan X said...

Mess? All I saw in Oside was offshore winds, clean peaks, and fun barrels. I love when the wind decides to play nice.

Anonymous said...

yea oside was fun this morning

Unknown said...

yeah...the winds layed down a bit more last night than the forecast models thought they would. (the little cold front moved through a bit faster than it was projected).

I got a few reports that SD was ok for the winds today, which I am glad some people still got a few waves.

OC had some rideable but sort of sloppy looking stuff real early...but the onshore winds started hacking it up around 8am...so the window was pretty short.

It definitely looks cleaner on Thursday.