Waves for the Weekend – Sloppy Saturday with a clean-up on Sunday

Saturday looks chunky/funky as winds shift and hold onshore. Sunday conditions clean up and it looks like a surf day.

We will get a bit of a split decision this weekend thanks to a cold front pushing through the Socal region late Friday night and then moving further east on Saturday. Onshore W-NW winds will accompany this front and it will have things fairly blown out for Saturday morning. Sunday high-pressure builds back over the area and it looks like offshore winds will return. Swellwise we are going to see a mix of peaking WNW energy (285-300) and some local WNW-NW windswell (290-300). A small SW swell will hold way in the background.



Saturday we can expect the surf to continue to hold in the waist-chest high+ range at the average spots…with a few chest-head high sets mixing in at the “average” WNW-NW facing breaks. The standout NW spots, mostly through Ventura, the South Bay, and San Diego, will have shoulder-overhead surf with sets still going a couple of feet overhead as the swells combo up.



Winds, like I said, are not going to be very good on Saturday. Current forecasts are calling for consistent onshore winds out of the W-NW in the 10-15 knot range throughout Socal along with some stronger gusts hitting 20+ knots at the well exposed beaches from Santa Barbara down through Los Angeles. These winds may lighten up slightly in the afternoon but it would have to completely shut down or go steady offshore for the surf shape to clean up before the end of the day.



Sunday the mix of WNW-NW energy (280-300), both the longer-period and the local windswell, will be backing off steadily throughout the day…but even though it is dropping we will still hold onto some decent size at the exposed spots through the morning. Look for the average WNW facing spots to be in the waist-shoulder high range while the top NW breaks (again at the usual suspects) see some chest-shoulder high surf with sets going head high and still a little overhead through the morning.



Winds look a lot better on Sunday. Offshore winds will start to fill back in later Saturday night and will strengthen as we head into Sunday morning. For the dawn patrol we can expect E-NE winds 10-15 knots with some stronger gusts in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Los Angeles. Orange County and San Diego will have light/variable offshore flow around 5-8 knots for the morning. Look for variable onshore winds around 10-12 knots for the afternoon, and then another possible clean up for the evening.

If you couldn’t tell Sunday will be the best call surfwise even though the swell will be fading. Saturday at this point looks a bit sloppy. As usual, when we have this sort of unstable conditions (like this passing front), I recommend that you keep a “weather eye” on conditions…sometimes small pockets of surfable conditions can pop up as things get all swirly and the more you pay attention the better your odds of picking one off become. Also please pay attention to the swell direction…the majority of the energy is coming in from 290 and above, and while there is some more westerly components to this swell, it is much smaller at spots that don’t have clear NW exposure. S facing beaches are considerably smaller than the NW facing ones…try to pick breaks that don’t get left out of the fun. NW facing points/reefs have the best shape…the exposed beach breaks are getting pretty walled up.

Here are the tides…have a good weekend…

11/28/2009 Saturday
05:40AM LST 5.4 H
12:51PM LST 0.5 L
06:48PM LST 3.6 H
11:53PM LST 1.8 L

11/29/2009 Sunday
06:10AM LST 5.8 H
01:28PM LST -0.2 L
07:37PM LST 3.6 H