Thursday, July 8, 2010

Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 7/08/2010

Forecast Overview
- Look for fugly conditions and fading S swell on Friday.
- Junky winds and leftover, almost too small, swell mix for Saturday
- Sunday the crap winds continue while we see a new mix of S and SW swells as well as a bit of local windswell
- Monday the S and SW swells fill in a touch more and winds start to back down.
- Tuesday and Wednesday we will finally have some cleaner conditions and even a little bit of playful surf…(man this seems like a long ways away)
- New storm activity in the South Pacific long-range forecast…looks like more surf heading our way for the last part of July.

Short Range (next 4 days)

Friday – (fading away and winds continue to suck…I hate you wind)
The last of the S swell (175-185) will arrive as the energy continues to trail off through Friday. WNW-NW windswell build up slightly in the background but mostly it stays pretty marginal. S facing spots will be in the knee-waist high range with inconsistent waist high+ sets. Standout S facing breaks will still manage some waist-chest high surf on inconsistent sets…along with some rare shoulder-high waves on really inconsistent sets. Look for size and consistency to back down as we move throughout the day. Winds/Weather: The NW winds are forecast to stick around through Friday. Overall we can expect light NW-W winds around 3-5 knots with a couple of pockets hitting 5-7 knots at times through the morning. W winds 10-15+ knots with some stronger gusts.



Saturday – (crappy leftover S swell/windswell mix with more crappy wind)
Just some leftover S swell…a touch of background SW energy and local WNW windswell…oh and craptacular winds. Man we can’t get a break. Surf will be knee high for most S facing spots while the standouts see some inconsistent knee-waist high+ sets. Conditions look like poop though. Winds/Weather: W winds get a jump on things early…blowing around 4-5 knots for the morning, which isn’t a lot…but the winds will have been blowing that way all night so shape will be pretty sloppy. W winds around 10-15+ return by the late afternoon.



Sunday - (arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!)
A new, small, inconsistent SW swell (200-220) will start to pulse up on Sunday mixing with some weak S swell and sloppy WNW-NW windswell. Most spots will continue to see surf in the knee high range with some knee-waist high sets sneaking through. The standout S-SW facing spots, mostly in OC and SD, will have some chest high sets. Shape, thanks to the wind, continues to look like poop. Winds/Weather: Guess what? The W winds are back on Sunday...and it looks even a tad stronger than it has been. Expect onshore W flow around 8-10 knots for the morning and then gusts hitting 15+ knots by the afternoon.



Monday - (holy crap…winds clean up a bit…though it looks cleaner on Tuesday)
The surf increases a bit as the mix of S and SW swell fill in a little more and the WNW-NW windswell increases slightly as well. Look for more knee-waist high surf at the average spots with some waist-chest high surf at the standouts and even a few really inconsistent chest high+ sets on the lower tides. Winds/Weather: The real news is that our winds are supposed to improve slightly…not completely glass off or anything (that would be a miracle)…but back down more than they have in a while. For the morning we can expect W-NW winds around 2-3 knots along with some light/variable conditions at spots with some good wind protection. The W-NW winds do pick up through the afternoon hitting around 10-15 knots…but they are supposed to lighten quite a bit overnight and set up cleaner conditions for Tuesday.



Long-Range

North Pacific
Nothing special happening in the NPAC…but there is one little runt of a storm spinning up under the Aleutians that is forecast to set up some extremely steep angled NW swell (295-300) for Socal around the middle of next week.



You can see it getting some reasonable sea-heights going…but the majority of the energy is heading toward Alaska and Canada (eh!)



Socal can expect this swell to move in on Tuesday (July 13) and hold into Wednesday (July 14). It looks like this swell is going to be exclusively for the NW San Diego standouts…and maybe a couple of the really well exposed areas in Ventura and the South Bay. Sizewise it looks like knee-waist high for the average NW spots and some rare chest high sets at the SD standouts. Really it is barely worth talking about…but I threw it in the forecast since there is nothing coming from the NPAC.



South Pacific
The last of the S swell will start to trail off (under bumpy conditions) Friday and Saturday.

Further out…the SPAC was a bit quiet and disorganized after that big storm slammed through, but it did manage to set up some weaker areas of fetch as smaller storms swirled in the wake of the stronger system. These weak fetches will be pushing up some overlapping pulses of S-SW swell as we head into Sunday (July 11th) and then holding through the middle of July. Nothing looks particularly strong or noteworthy…but we can expect some waist-chest high waves at the better exposed spots and even a few inconsistent shoulder high sets at the standouts as these small swells filter through next week.

Even further out there is a decent sized-storm forecast to form down in our SSW-SW swell window in about 3-4 days. At the same time it looks like another tropical system is going to form to the north of New Zealand...



It looks like there is a good shot at a bunch of this tropical energy could bridge over to the bigger/colder storm down closer to Antarctica, which would really increase wind-speeds and kick the storm into a different gear. I don’t think the wavewatchIII wave model is doing a great job showing the increase in intensity on the swell-height images…but I have a feeling this will change in a few days as we get closer to this storm forming.



At this point…if this storm forms…we would be looking at a chest-head high SSW-SW swell heading our way for July 22-23rd…possibly a little bigger at a few of the standout SW spots.

Tropics
I can hear the crickets chirping…”chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp…” yeah I hate that sound too.



the Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010.

Adam Wright
Surf Forecaster
http://www.socalsurf.com/

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Time for a surf'n sun sacrifice. Burnin' a board tonight. Now that 'Bron's signed, it's boring again.

Anonymous said...

what is up with the CLOUDS??? Can you do a post just on when the SUN is going to come out??

Anonymous said...

Bron sold out, maybe thats why its so cold and cloudy