Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 10/15/2009

Forecast Overview

The next couple of days look like fun “Surf Days” thanks to the mix of fading but still healthy W-WNW swell and a peaking S swell. Weak Santa Ana conditions are expected to develop and should help to keep conditions clean for most of Friday/Saturday before shifting back to slightly cooler (more normal) conditions by early next week. More WNW swell and more SW swell on tap for next week.

Short Range (next 4 days)

Friday
Friday is looking like a good surf day. If you don’t mind the water quality you might want to start thinking about your work “excuses” for tomorrow. The W-WNW swell (275-300) while still healthy will be backing down while our S swell (180-200) continues to peak. Average exposed breaks, both S and W facing average breaks, will be in the chest-shoulder high range. Standout NW facing breaks, S facing spots, and the excellent combo breaks, will be in the shoulder-head high range on most of the sets, but with still a few overhead peaks mixing in, particularly through the morning. Winds/Weather: Conditions look really good Friday…light Santa Anas through the morning with N-NE winds in the 5-10 knot range. Light afternoon winds…turning slightly onshore through the mid-afternoon.



Saturday
Our swell mix will start to back off but will continue to send in playful sized waves to the exposed areas. W-WNW swell (275-300) will drop but won’t completely fade out as we see some minor reinforcing pulses of WNW-NW energy (285-300) helping to prop it up. S swell will be on the way down but still has enough juice to keep waves heading into the S facing breaks. On average look for surf in the waist-chest high range with some inconsistent shoulder high sets. Standout breaks, mostly the best combo spots, will be in the chest-shoulder high range with some head high sets showing on the lower tides. Winds/Weather: Good conditions again on Saturday…slightly offshore winds in the morning (the Santa Ana conditions are expected to weaken). Light to moderate onshore winds develop out of the WNW-NW by the afternoon/evening.



Sunday
The WNW-NW swell (285-300) holds while the S swell (180-200) drops to mostly leftovers. Look for the average spots to hold around waist-chest high with chest high+ sets still sneaking through. The Standout NW facing breaks, mostly through San Diego and Ventura, will be in the chest-shoulder high range with a few rare head high sets still showing at the NW facing breaks that can still pull in a little background S energy. Winds/Weather: More normal type conditions…light and variable winds through the morning and then NW winds around 10-15 knots by the afternoon.



Monday
The WNW-NW (290-300) swell continues to hang around but gets a little steeper in swell angle. New SW swell (200-220) starts to show some inconsistent but long-period energy as it begins filling in through the day. Wave heights will hold around the waist-chest high+ range at the average exposed breaks. Standout NW facing spots, and the best combo breaks, mostly in San Diego, will be more consistently in the waist-shoulder high range…again some rare bigger sets pushing through at times. Winds/Weather: Light/variable onshore flow…possibly a bit eddish in the morning. NW winds 10-15 knots on tap by the afternoon.



And for you guys that want to check out the new CDIP models…here is the link

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/themes/cdip?d2=p54:r:Southern_California_Swell_Forecast:p:Hs:c:forecast&tz=PDT

Long-Range

North Pacific
Plenty of storm action still stacking up in the North Pacific…it already feels more active than all of last winter put together (probably just because last winter sucked bigtime). I am not seeing anything like the storm that just pushed through but there are a couple of smaller low-pressures that will slide through the NW parts of our swell window…setting up more WNW-NW energy for this weekend…and then another pulse of WNW-NW energy for the 20-21st. Both of these look to be about chest high for the average spots with some shoulder high+ sets at the standouts.



Further Out the long-range models, which aren’t that stable, are showing some new strong-looking activity forming up in the Gulf of Alaska in about 5-6 days…if this pulls together we could be looking at more WNW-NW swell (285-300) heading our way for the 24-26th.

South Pacific
We have new S swell (180-200) peaking Thursday and Friday before fading slowly through the weekend.



There has also been some OK looking storm/fetch holding just southeast of New Zealand that set up some more SW swell (200-220) that will arrive around the 19th and peak the 20-21st with surf in the chest-shoulder high range at the top SW facing breaks.

Further out the SPAC has quieted down a bit…nothing significant in the extreme long-range forecast at this point…but we can still expect a few rideable pulses of SW activity as we head into the last part of October.

Northeast Pacific Tropics
The tropics…mostly because they like to mess with me…have managed to pull together the right conditions to spin out at least one more, potentially large, tropical system before we move out of the official season. TD-20e formed up Thursday morning…and is forecast to become Named Storm “Rick” in the next 24 or so hours.



As you can see on the long-range models this new storm has the potential to become a full-fledged hurricane…possibly even a Major Hurricane (Cat 4 or higher). The models are also suggesting that it will move into our swell window sometime late in the weekend...possibly sending up some SE swell for next week. Personally I think that these tropical systems just like to make me check the computer every 3 hours over the weekend so that I can stay on top of the forecast…stupid tropical storms.

Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009

Adam Wright
Surf Forecaster
http://www.socalsurf.com/