Friday, December 4, 2009

Waves for the Weekend – NW swell holds into Saturday and some funky chicken weather on Sunday

Saturday will be a rideable, maybe even fun, day and if the tide wasn’t a macho 6’+ high right in midmorning I would probably even say that it was going to be a surf day.

Sunday on the other hand is looking a bit sloppy thanks to building onshore winds and some scattered rain that is expected to push down the coast later Saturday night.



Swellwise on Saturday we can expect a mix of peaking NW swell (290-300), NW windswell, and a touch of background SW energy. Most spots will hold in the waist-chest high range on either side of the high tide bulge. The top NW facing breaks, the spots that can pull in the steeper swell angle (295-300) like those in Ventura, the South Bay, and San Diego, will have consistent chest-shoulder high surf with some head high and even head high+ sets sneaking in on better tides throughout the day.



Saturday’s winds will be ok in the morning…with light and variable flow for most areas and a few spots that see some offshore/side-offshore winds. Look for W-WSW winds 10-14 knots to start to fill in late in the afternoon.



Sunday the longer-period NW swell (290-300) will be dropping off while our local W-WNW windswell starts to increase, thanks to the junky onshore winds that are forecast to hold throughout the day. Most average spots will see waist-chest high surf with poor shape. The top NW facing breaks will still be around chest-shoulder high with some head high sets…but again most of the well exposed spots will also have wind problems and will likely see poor surf shape.



Winds and weather look funky…onshore W winds are expected to hold around 10-12 knots through the morning and then build in around 10-15 knots by the afternoon. Cloudy skies and periods of rain, particularly Sunday night, will continue to push through the region.

Basically Saturday looks like the day if you are going to surf this weekend…I won’t totally write off Sunday yet, just because these little fronts can be notoriously fickle when it comes to intensity and arrival times. Best case scenario is that the storm comes in weaker and slower than the current forecast is calling for…and lets us have a little surf window on Sunday morning. Keep an eye on conditions and at least plan on giving the cameras a check early Sunday just to make sure you aren’t missing anything.

Here are the tides…have a good one!

12/05/2009 Saturday
04:12AM LST 2.4 L
10:18AM LST 6.1 H
05:57PM LST -0.9 L

12/06/2009 Sunday
12:42AM LST 3.8 H
05:20AM LST 2.5 L
11:15AM LST 5.6 H
06:50PM LST -0.5 L

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does Malibu ever really go off in the winter?

Anonymous said...

Hey Adam, where do you get the CDIP swell forecast model? It's really helpful to have the swell direction on there.
THANKS for all your work!!!