Friday, January 8, 2010

Swell Alert/Update – New W-WNW swell starting to fill in

I am working on the forecast update for the weekend but I thought I would throw out a little teaser.

Most spots were coming up this morning but the main part of the new W-WNW swell (270-300) hadn’t really started to arrive. That is starting to change…right now the “outer nearshore buoys” (the ones that are positioned in the more open waters around Point Conception and outside of our nearshore islands) are starting to pop. Check out the Lajollasurf.org Buoy Summary list…there are a lot of blue arrows pointing east (the way the swell is going).



And here is the Harvest Buoy…it is running about 10-feet at a dominant swell-period of 17-seconds. In fact about 80% of the energy showing on the buoy is coming in from the W-WNW with swell periods of 10-12 seconds or longer.



Here is the old school CDIP chart...check out the shift in the scale.



The wind isn’t perfect, but it isn’t blowing that hard either…and it is looking like there is a good chance that it will clean-up or even glass off at spots with a little protection. With the manageable winds, building swell, and ok tides I think that we might be able to have a little Friday-funtime in the right spots.



If you guys are still at work I would seriously consider faking some sort of an emergency, or a bad case of the “number 3’s”…you know…“sorry boss that chipotle burrito is going right through me I think I need to go uh…home…yeah home”. I hope you have your gear in your car.

One more thing…I just want to give a shout out to Joe over at Lajollasurf.org for providing the sweet buoy interface. That thing has been a go-to for me pretty much since the interweb was invented, and it plays a major role in helping me with these forecasts. He has had that thing up and running for over a decade now and lets everyone use it for free…so incredibly cool…anyway thanks Joe! This would be a lot harder without your efforts. ~ Adam (Make sure to check out his site if you haven’t already… http://www.lajollasurf.org/ )

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It was pretty fun around mid-morning - every now and then a front-running OH+ set would break outside.

Even funnier were the various guys talking amongst themselves about saving their strength.

I guess everyone knows we're gonna have a full week's worth of waves.