Turkey Day Surf – Clean and holding…with a new NW swell out the back

Thanksgiving will be a marginal surf day…the swell is still a little steeply angled to put many waves at the “average spots”…expect nice conditions but mostly slow inconsistent surf.

In the water we are going to have a mix of holding NW energy (290-300), some background SW swell (200-220) and some local NW windswell.



Average spots are going to see knee-waist high surf through the morning on Thursday. Most of it will be soft and slow, breaking close to shore if your spot can’t handle the tide swings. The better NW facing spots will be more in the waist-high range with some inconsistent chest high sets…again a little soft on the higher tides.

The NW facing standouts in South Ventura, the South Bay, and parts of Central/Southern San Diego, will see consistent waist-chest high+ surf with some shoulder high+ sets mixing in at times. Again plan on slower shape with long waits between the bigger waves through the morning.

Later in the afternoon the new long-period WNW-NW swell (280-300) will start to arrive, showing mostly in the Northerly counties (Santa Barbara, Ventura) before the sun sets. I don’t expect a ton of new size, even in those areas, but there may be some bigger waves pushing through into the indicator spots by late in the day. The rest of Socal may see a bit of an increase in wave-consistency…but not much size until the swell fills in later in the evening.

Winds look good…mostly light and variable to light offshore in the morning. Look for building WNW-NW winds around 10-15 knots for the afternoon.



So the smaller surf will continue on Thursday morning…keeping things slow and soft…but rideable if you have the right equipment (longboards for most people…and maybe some of those retro-fish if you are a lighter surfer). It is the holiday…so expect a crowd pretty much anywhere there are semi-rideable waves. Keep an eye on the NW spots…there is always a chance that we will have a few sneaker sets at those good breaks by the end of the day. Personally I might take out the old ugly stick, surf with the fam, and then go into some sort of turkey coma by the afternoon.

Here are the tides…have a great holiday guys!

11/26/2009 Thursday
04:49AM LST 4.5 H
11:32AM LST 1.8 L
04:50PM LST 3.4 H
10:41PM LST 1.4 L