Sunday, June 13, 2010

Monday’s Surf – Peaking SW helps to make it a surf day

Monday will be a surf day…but it looks like winds will come onshore early…so the dawn patrol might be the best surf window.

New SW swell (190-215) is going to peak on Monday…it is already showing pretty nicely on the buoys (check out the Dana Point Buoy…)



…and the peak of the energy will be hitting Monday morning and will hold overnight into Tuesday. NW windswell will continue to push through some smaller waves in the background but it will be a bit smaller than we saw over the weekend.



Sizewise…we can expect most of the average S-SW facing spots to see surf in the chest-shoulder high range, with a few bigger waves showing at spots with better SW exposure. The standout SW facing breaks, mostly through South OC, parts of San Diego, and a few other well exposed spots throughout Socal, will have chest-head high surf fairly consistently with a few overhead sets mixing in on the lower tides. The bigger sets will be less consistent but fun when they show.

Winds look ok…not great…but manageable. Look for mostly light and variable winds in the morning. The “variable” part of light and variable will be mostly onshore by midmorning…but the dawn patrol winds will be light right around sunup, sticking below 2-3 knots, which should help to keep most spots pretty clean, particularly if they have a little something to knock down the wind. Expect building onshore winds by midmorning…with NW winds 10-15 knots hitting by the afternoon.





So overall it should be pretty surfable…the swell is showing on the buoys and will continue to fill in overnight…winds will be on the light side…and the water is warming up all of which are good arguments to get a few waves tomorrow. I think you are going to find the best shape at the SW facing points and reefs…I saw how the swell was hitting the beach breaks on Sunday and it was a bit lined up when the sets rolled through (though you could surf them if you don’t have a point/reef handy). I am going to give the beach a check in the morning…after checking my trees/flags to see how the wind is doing.

Here are the tides…hope you guys can get a few tomorrow.

06/14/2010 Monday
05:43AM LDT -1.3 L
12:15PM LDT 3.7 H
04:56PM LDT 2.1 L
10:59PM LDT 6.1 H

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saturday morning was fun. Dp tomorrow! woohoo

Anonymous said...

today sucked royal. super low freakin tide. i guess china or somewhere over there had a huge freakin high tide today!

Anonymous said...

SD...not a surf day....it actually sucked...small and wind on it earlt!!

Anonymous said...

OC small scale surf this morning even on the tide push, its peaking in mainland mex so like 2 or 3 days from now should have some size, wsw wind picked up early water still nice

Unknown said...

not on SW swells...anything over 200 degrees will hit Socal and Mainland Mexico within hours of each other.

The way the coastline sits in orientation to the SW swell window it is pretty even from the Pacific NW all the way down through Central America. (the best way to see this is to look at a globe, or google earth...not a flat map).

True S swells (meaning S (170-190) for Socal) will hit Central America 2 days before Socal. Mainland Mexico is about 1.5 days and Cabo is about 1 day. That is if the swells are above 16-17 second swell periods and below 20 seconds.

Today is the peak of the swell, (North OC was head high on the tide push today), it will hold ok into Tuesday then fade out. If you aren't seeing it at your spot you might be out of luck...it isn't going to get bigger later this week.

greg said...

hey adam - i know you're an OC boy, but do you know why this swell didn't make it into Venice/North Bay? i thought with the higher period energy it would be able to bend in but it was really flat today compared to the weekend. is 200 degrees still too S for Venice? Even north LA barely got anything...

Unknown said...

Greg, that is a bummer than it wasn't showing much up there...you are right that Venice likes the swell to be more SW (210-220)...but it does have some exposure to the SSW too.

Unfortunately most of those SW swells get clipped by the SPAC islands so they need to be pretty big to overcome the shadowing.

One other thing that kind of screws North LA is Cortes Bank. For some reason, when there is some short-period NW swell in the water, long-period swells have trouble making it through the Bank without getting tweaked. The crazy part is that the same swell will pass over the bank without many issues if there is no windswell in the water.

This is really weird since swell is basically energy without much associated mass...so it shouldn't be able to interfere with other swells in this way. It is likely a combination of the swells shoaling over the banks shallower water...but whatever the cause it has a tendency to block out or bend the longer-period S-SW swells heading to North LA. Stupid ocean.

greg said...

thanks Adam! that actually makes a lot of sense because this weekend was surprisingly good in Venice when i was expecting there to be no waves. i guess i need some robots to patrol the beach and report back to me when it's good.

and i never knew that about cortes, great, another giant mass that i have to destroy! (or maybe just move slightly north...)

Unknown said...

hahahaha...hmmm I wonder how much dynamite that would take? and can we add a couple more islands to the list?

We could use the rubble to create about 1000 point/reef breaks between Point Conception (well where it used to be) and the border. I am in!

greg said...

i like the way you think adam. maybe we can trick north korea into bombing it. and i am always open to including catalina and the stupid channel islands.

if everything goes to plan we will have 1000 breaks open to NW and SW swells, with no shadowing, that can handle high and low tide, and NW, S and E winds!

they will also have endless barrels and walls for ripping.

and no dolphins.

Anonymous said...

Hey adam thats cool i never thought 200+ souths hit at the same time, dang i wish i surfed where you did i surfed mid morning i biked from hb pier down to 40th street newports didnt see much over waist to chest high