December 9th-10th WNW-NW swell – After-action results

So I have been going over the survey of the WNW-NW swell that hit Dec 9-10th, compiling the answers, and just generally absorbing the information that you guys were kind enough to pass along, (which actually turned out to be a lot of really cool stuff). From a purely forecast-feedback standpoint this survey has been a great resource and has provided some solid insight that will help me refine future forecasts, which hopefully will help you guys get more waves.



Now after a couple of days of sorting it out, (and by sorting it out I mean being distracted by my usual ADD, playing Super Mario Bros.wii with my 4 year old, and having my home office rendered un-useable by my dog’s gas…which is no joke), I think I have it in a cool format where I can share it with you guys.

The goal of this breakdown isn’t so much about giving away a ton of specific information on surf spots, but more about sharing how our little community perceived and interacted with this WNW-NW swell. Did it live up to the hype? How did it hit the different regions? Did we have fun with this one or was it too much swell energy? There are a lot of interesting answers.

One thing to keep in mind when we look at some of the data is the perception of wave size. Wave-size is so subjective that it makes you want to pull your hair out sometimes. It is such a personal thing that you will almost never get the same answer from different surfers…you can take 10-guys down to the beach, or show them a video, or whatever, and as the swell gets bigger you will get 10 different answers to the basic question of “how big is it?”.

A little further down in this report you will see some “average” wave sizes for each region, remember these heights are being averaged from your responses and since one person’s 5-foot wave doesn’t always match up with your idea of a 5-foot wave, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Ok now with that little caveat out of the way…let’s go over some of the highlights of the survey.

Highlights
We had about 350+ people fill out the survey…with about a 50/50 split reporting either on Wednesday’s or Thursday’s surf.

About the swell
Almost everyone felt that the swell did not live up to the forecasts, and that it arrived early, peaking on Wednesday, before dropping on Thursday.

The general consensus was that while the surf was good, it wasn’t as big as expected, and the crowds were a bit heavy in anticipation of larger surf.

Also, and this is more of a personal observation, it sounded like the buzz about the swell got out Wednesday night as the first reports started filtering to everyone, and the combo of dropping sizes and a fat morning tide made for a disappointing surf check early on Thursday.

On Wednesday, December 9th, most of you thought the surf was definitely above average…here is how it was rated in the survey.

Excellent - 3.8%
Good to Excellent - 20.0%
Good - 26.3%
Fair to Good - 23.8%
Fair - 15.6%
Poor to Fair - 6.9%
Poor - 1.9%
It sucked - 1.9%

On Thursday, December 10th, the surf continued to be rated above average…even edging a bit further into the “good” range than Wednesday.

Excellent - 8.4%
Good to Excellent - 17.8%
Good - 28.7%
Fair to Good - 22.3%
Fair - 13.9%
Poor to Fair - 5.4%
Poor - 2.5%
It sucked - 1.0%


Highlights about you guys in general
(to sort of set the stage on your surf responses)

About 75% of you rode a shortboard… and about 4% of you apparently were dolphins, which if you know my sordid history with flipper, does not put you on my “warm-fuzzy” feeling list. Here check out the chart…I think that I make myself pretty clear.



The majority of the survey responses were for spots in North LA, Orange County, and San Diego.

Santa Barbara and Ventura had the fewest responses.

Across both days bout 70% of you surfed in the morning (from the Dawn Patrol up through Brunch).

You guys spread out the spots pretty well, there didn’t seem to be an overwhelming preference for any particular break.

We all thought it was f-ing cold in the morning on both days.

You had fun…an overwhelming 93% percent said so.

Adding the optional “comments” section at the end was a good choice on my part…almost everyone that took the time to add additional comments provided some awesome feedback. Lots of great stories, good descriptions of the surf, and some classic comedy from you guys. This was easily my favorite part of going through the data.

Let's move on to the wave/swell details.

Wednesday December 9th, 2009

Swell Details
The new WNW-NW swell (280-300) was already showing pretty well early on Wednesday. It had actually started to pulse up in select spots in Ventura on Tuesday evening, and it pretty much peaked in that area through Wednesday morning. The other, more southerly regions, had the swell coming on strong through the morning but according to buoys it peaked more around midday. The swell periods were very long compared to average WNW-NW swells, arriving initially at 22-24 second periods, and with wave heights peaking in the 18-20 second range.



The CDIP analysis “nowcast” model had the WNW’er peaking with nearly 10-11’ of deepwater energy, but the model was being initialized off of the Harvest Buoy that was both closer and much more exposed to the swell’s energy due to its position ESE of Point Conception (and out of most of the swell shadowing that occurs in Socal’s actual surf zones).

Wednesday’s Surf Reported in the Survey
Here are the Regional CDIP “nowcasts” with the average morning and afternoon wave heights reported for each area.









And here is a graph with those wave heights compared against each other…as you can see much of Wednesday’s morning size was concentrated in the North…but filled in more through the afternoon.






Thursday December 10th, 2009

Swell Details
By Thursday morning the swell according to our nearshore buoys had dropped off quite a bit, losing as much as 3-4’ feet of size on some of the more “exposed” buoys. The swell had also started to slow down with most of the energy now coming in at 15-16 second periods, which meant that not only did the swell lose some size but it was losing the underlying power as well. It also changed how the swell refracted and bent compared to Wednesday, which means that the “focal” spots changed from the long-period standouts to breaks that do better on the medium-long period energy. The swell also did dip a little in swell direction…shifting a little more W-WNW in its approach, but the majority of the energy continued to push in from the NW (290-300) swell angle. These changes generally increased how many spots saw the swell but it hacked out a considerable amount of size from the bigger sets.



Thursday’s Surf Reported in the Survey

Here are the Regional CDIP “nowcasts” with the average morning and afternoon wave heights reported for each area.









And here are Thursday’s wave heights laid out in graph form so you can compare each region. Definite drop off from Wednesday’s sizes, and even less on tap through the afternoon.






Some Final Thoughts on this swell
I was looking back through my forecasts for the days leading up to this WNW swell and they matched up ok/fair with what we actually saw surfwise (or at least what was reported in the survey), which to me means that my forecasts could have been dialed in a bit better.

I expected the swell to show more size in the mid-long period range, but instead it peaked way up in the long-period range, which threw off the timing (Long-period swells travel much faster than short-period ones, and decay less as well). Sizewise it was bigger on Wednesday while I was expecting the bigger day to be on Thursday.

Not to get too weather nerdy (sorry can’t help it)…but in hindsight I can see where my forecast, and the various swell models, ran into issues. Check it out…



Obviously this is a much simplified version of what happened, but the two arrows sum it up pretty well. Basically the storm’s fetch was forecast to push further east before curving northward…the forecast model had it traveling quite a ways than it actually did…and that missing time of “wind over water” gutted the medium period portion of the swell.

This is actually a problem that crops up from time to time with both the GFS and the NOGAPs models, they have trouble estimating wind strength in those mid-latitudes, particularly when there is a lot of extra-tropical energy involved. Since the swell-models are driven by the wind/weather models, it becomes a case of crap-data-in/crap-data-out…which sucks. You can lessen the impact of the models’ weakness by getting actual measured satellite data, but for this storm the QuikSCAT satellite, which was a great one for getting wind information, decided to stop working and is probably drifting off into deep space at this point (I am not really kidding on that last part).

Anyhoo…enough of my problems…at the end of the day some of you guys had trouble finding the sort of waves that you were expecting from my forecasts, (I am sure with some always lovely help from the various surf-forecast hype machine/giant game of Telephone that big swells have become over the last several years), which means that this little ol’ forecast could be tightened up and I can work on being a little clearer on what we can really expect when the swells actually arrive.

Thanks again for the survey responses…hopefully this little breakdown on the swell will help you guys score a few more waves next time a decent sized winter swell brews up.

Cheers!

Adam Wright
Forecaster
www.socalsurf.com

The Pipeline Masters will run today – Live stream is up already

So I just got an email that the Pipe Masters will run today (starting at 9am HST). I was checking out their site and they already have started the live stream.

It looks pretty sick…I would highly recommend downloading the Hi-Def player from FuelTV…the image is ridiculous.

http://triplecrownofsurfing.com/pipelinemasters/live.php

Ocean Science 101: El Nino Update

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) has just issued the latest update on the El Nino conditions…and the current data is showing that the El Nino is strengthening.

When I did my last El Nino update in september, which you can find here…

http://socalforecast.blogspot.com/2009/09/ocean-science-101-effects-of-el-nino-on.html

…the average increase is SST (Sea Surface Temps) was about 0.9 to 1.1 degree Celsius above the seasonal “base” temperature.

Over the last month there has been a pretty sharp jump in SST’s in the areas normally associated with El Nino conditions, particularly the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. The new El Nino strength is showing above average temps around 1.5 to 1.75 degrees Celsius which puts us squarely into the “moderate” range…but edging up into the “strong” category.

Check it out.



And this chart shows the breakdown by subregion…El Nino Zones 3.4 and 4 are both areas that have a direct effect on the West Coast.



Zone 4 is located along the equator over by Hawaii…this areas is pretty important from a “winter storm” standpoint since this is where a lot of the tropical/extra-tropical moisture is fed into the colder high-latitude systems. As this region warms it means that we have a better chance of larger/more-intense storms forming closer and in better position to send swell to Southern California.

Zone 3.4 is the Eastern Pacific Tropical region…where we see most of the tropical storms, that can send Socal S-SE swell, spin up. This isn’t as crucial an area for our winter surf, but it does help to support the increase temps in Zone 4 and add moisture to that sub-tropical jet-stream that sometimes forms during the winter, increasing our local rain (and snow).

Lastly here is a chart that shows how El Nino is affecting water temps at deeper depths.



It shows that El Nino isn’t a shallow phenomenon that could break down quickly, but instead is a well-entrenched shift in both oceanic and atmospheric conditions that will continue to affect us for the next several months.

Current long-term El Nino outlooks are calling for this episode to hold or possibly strengthen through January 2010 and then start a slow cooling trend as we move through the middle to second half of the year.

What this means surfwise?

Like I said in the last update…having El Nino conditions does not guarantee that we will have good winter surf, but it definitely increases the odds. Now that the Nino is strengthening in the areas that directly affect our storm production and positioning, it looks like the odds of getting decen waves are going to get even better. I know one thing for sure…we have already had more waves this winter than we did all of last season, which equals a win in my book.

After-Action Report

Now that this WNW swell has sort of passed its peak I wanted to try something new and guess what? I want you all to be my guinea pigs. (Insert maniacal laughter here).

Actually it isn’t that bad…I was just wondering if you guys would mind filling out an “after-action” report on how this swell behaved throughout Socal...and since nothing provides better feedback than hearing from actual people who surfed during the swell I thought you might be able to help me.

I put together a really quick survey over at the surveymonkey website…it is super short...and just asks you how your session went and where you surfed.

Your personal responses will be confidential…but I thought I would put together a little post-swell analysis that I would share on the website.

Anyway…if you feel like participating here is the link…

Click here to fill out the after-action report

If you surfed more than once during the past couple of days feel free to run through the survey for each session.

Thanks everyone!

here is the link again if you need to copy/paste it into your browser for some reason

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BGTYQRC

Surf Photos – A few shots from this fun WNW-NW’er

Soooo…I scheduled a midmorning meeting a little further south than I normally surf…along a stretch of coast that had, let’s say some better WNW-NW exposure, and since I was about 4 hours early I just had to find something to do…(fortunately I brought my camera along…and uh my board/wetsuit/wax/towel/waxcomb/fin-key/ect/ect...nevermind I think you get the picture).

The classic part is that I left my usual beach break jetties (with a power plant backdrop) to go surf another beach break jetty (with a power plant backdrop). Way to branch out there Adam.

Anyway here are the photos…





It was all going good until my mortal enemies arrived. As you can see they weren’t pleased to find me there either…you can see Flipper getting ready to do something devious in the background.

Surf Photos – A few from Sunday Funday

Here are a few more shots from the NW swell that hit last weekend (Nov 8), taken from on high. I wish there were a few peaks like these out there today

Tropical Update - Hurricane Rick starting to slow down

Hurricane Rick is starting to weaken…oh he is still pretty intense as storms go…but he has definitely toned it down from the Category-5 nonsense that he was putting out over the weekend.

Currently Rick’s core winds are holding around 100-knots (120-mph) with gusts hitting 120-knots (144-mph).



This weakening is due to a couple of factors…namely that Rick is hitting cooler water and upper level shearing at the same time. The National Hurricane Center is estimating that the shearing is close to 15-20 knots which can destabilize a hurricane’s convection pretty quickly.

Check out the difference in the satellite photos from Saturday afternoon compared against this morning’s. You can see that Rick has lost a lot of his shape…and thanks to the increased shearing most of his NW and SW quadrants have lost their cloud shape making the storm looking increasingly asymmetrical.

Saturday Afternoon



Monday Morning



And here you can see the sea-surface temps from the CIMSS site…that 27-28 degree (Celsius) Isotherm line is generally what forecasters consider the cutoff in sea-surface-temps needed for a storm to maintain its strength.



Unfortunately from a swell-perspective this is bad news for Southern California for a couple of reasons…first is that the storm is weakening and once a tropical storm starts to weaken, particularly when it is caused by shearing, it has a tendency to lift its winds off of the surface of the ocean in fluky periods, which means that the fetch potentially setting up swell is suddenly less consistent and broken up as the storm starts to destabilize.

The other sucky part of what is happening to Rick is that this shearing (which will push him back to the east faster than the original forecasts were estimating) will keep Rick from moving deeper into the Socal swell window.



Based on the latest satellite pics…I don’t think that Rick pushed far enough into our window to generate us much surf…sure half of the storm was over that little green line…but those winds were blowing the wrong way, which does us no good.

Rick still has a little more WNW-N movement in him before he hinks back to the ENE and towards cabo…but with the storm weakening and shearing starting to pull him apart I don’t think that he is going to get much of a chance to set up swell. It probably won’t be totally flat at the SE facing spots…but any swell that makes it out of Rick will probably be fairly small (mostly below chest-shoulder high) and short-lived even at the top exposed spots.

Basically this point it looks like any energy we will see will arrive throughout the day on the 21st out of the SE (155-165) and will be mostly small, shadowed (except in a couple of areas), and will be almost completely gone by Thursday the 22nd. Fortunately there will be more long-period SW and NW swell showing around the same time so hopefully Rick will just help to enhance the surf shape/consistency at the exposed breaks.

Tropical Update – Tropical Storm Nora

A tropical disturbance that had been drifting about 600 miles SW of the tip of Baja began to organize late last night and has now strengthened into Tropical Storm Nora.



Currently TS Nora is weak-to-moderate tropical storm with core winds in the 35-40 knot range and gusts getting up around 45-50 knots. She is positioned about 900 miles due south of SoCal...and is moving slowly to the WNW (tracking at 300-degrees) at a slow speed of about 8-knots.





Forecast models are calling for Nora to intensify over the next 24 hours, reaching the “strong” tropical storm level and possibly becoming a hurricane. While this intensification is good news it sounds like it won’t last that long...while the models agree on the intensification they also agree that she will hit cooler water and some upper level wind shear shortly afterwards, which gives her a very short swell-making period. You can see her track taking her into cooler water on the chart below.



The good news is that NORA is already in our swell window and is positioned so that any swell she sends out will be a more “democratic” S swell rather than a shadowed SE swell. It also helps that she is moving slowly and has a slightly more WNW track.

The bad news is that overall she is still a pretty small storm right now...with her Tropical Storm strength winds only reaching out about 40-50 miles...and while that may increase as she strengthens it doesn’t look like it will get all that much bigger.

So after looking at today’s forecasts...I do think that we will get a few waves from Tropical Storm Nora but that they are going to be on the small side. I am looking for the new S swell (170-185) to start moving in with some tropical knee-waist high sets by late Thursday and holding into Friday. There is a chance that it will come in bigger if, and it is a big if, the storm strengthens significantly and holds together longer than the forecast models indicate...but personally I am not holding my breath.

Ocean Science 101: Effects of El Nino on the Winter 2009-2010 Surf Season

Hey gang…I have a couple of people ask me about the how the current El Nino conditions are going to affect our surf this winter…so I thought I would put a little post together.

I think that it is important to start with the understanding that just having “El Nino” conditions does not guarantee that Southern California will get good surf.

Weather is so ridiculously dynamic, and there are just too many factors that feed into storm generation (not to mention swell production), for us to really get a “for sure” long-range outlook that goes further out than a few days. Forecasting for a winter season that is still a couple of months away is more about comparing the developing atmospheric and oceanic conditions against previous seasons…and then applying statistical probability to the season ahead. In short it is basically educated guesswork, backed by historical data…we can analyze until we are blue in the face but we won’t know how things will turn out until after the fact.

Ok enough buzz-kill talk…the good news is that why El Nino doesn’t “guarantee” good surf, it does significantly increase the likelihood of storms forming lower in latitude and closer to the West Coast, both of which are “good things” for sending swell into Southern California…and, in general, the stronger the El Nino the higher the probability of these types of storms forming.

As of the last update from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center we are currently experiencing a moderate El Nino so far this fall…and that these conditions are likely to continue into the winter…possibly strengthening if some of the pieces can hold in place over the next month. You can actually check out the latest update here…

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

“Moderate” in this case actually means that the current conditions are weighing in on the strong side of the bell curve…basically this year’s El Nino will be stronger than most of the recorded El Ninos that we have experienced over the past 30+ years…with only a few of the really intense ones (1982-83, 1987-88, 1997-98) coming in stronger.

Here is a shot of the current Sea-Surface-Temps (SST) and the SST anomaly, which is the difference in sea temps against the historical “seasonal mean” temps. In the anomaly map the more yellowish-red that shows over by Central America the stronger the El Nino.



Why this matters for Southern California…

With El Nino there are two important air/ocean changes that occur that have a significant effect on the winter surf for Southern California. (Bear with me…it takes a little bit of explaining to get there.)

1. The shift of the jet streams (both the Polar and Pacific Jet stream).

2. The amount of warm water (and corresponding warm air-mass) that is available to fuel storm intensification.

During El Nino the jet streams that push eastward over the pacific shift slightly…we see the colder polar-jet move further northward, over Alaska and Canada, rather than flowing over the Gulf of Alaska. We also see the Pacific jet stream, which is a warmer and usually less stable in its position, strengthen and flatten out across the mid-latitudes. The combination of these two shifts effectively opens up the storm track and allows swell-producing storms to form in more southerly positions, which puts them more firmly in SoCal’s W-WNW swell window.



In point #2…The warmer water piling up on the eastern half of the Pacific…which is usually pushed along the equator off to the west…is basically a giant power-battery storing sunlight as “latent-heat energy”. All of this energy is usually over past Hawaii, towards the Philippines, helping fuel WPAC Typhoons/Cyclones and bleeding extra-tropical goodness into those hyper-intense storms that make the Kamchatka Peninsula such a nice place to visit.

By repositioning that energy in the EPAC, storms that would have generally been starting to lose strength as they hit the cooler waters off of California and the Pacific NW, now have much more energy (in the form of warm/wet air-mass) to continue intensification. As most of you know…stronger storms, closer to your position, mean bigger swell.


A shot of the 97-98 El Nino and how crazy hot the water in the EPAC got


What this means for our surf…

With the moderate El Nino conditions expected to either continue (or strengthen) as we head into this winter season, we can expect to see stronger and better positioned storms forming in the Southern California swell window. With more intensity and more time in the swell window the incoming swells should be both bigger and last longer as they push into our region. Overall we should have a much better “surf” winter than we have had over the last couple of years.

One other thing that we do have to keep in mind is that with the lower latitude/more intense storm track combining with a lot of warm/unstable air-mass filtering up from the tropics this winter is liable to be a lot “wetter” than the previous couple of winters. So while we get increased swell action, we also get the potential for crappy conditions as the storms push over top our region.

I don’t know about you guys…I am willing to sacrifice a few days to junky weather in order to get some more consistent surf.

Anyways…If you guys are into diving in a much more detailed analysis of this winter’s El Nino and all of the factors that go into measuring estimating it…I would go and check Mark Sponsor’s winter/El Nino outlook over at http://www.stormsurf.com/ ...here is the link (make sure to visit a few of Mark’s advertisers in appreciation of his extremely thorough work.)

http://www.stormsurf.com/page2/enso/current.shtml

Bonus Section: What is an El Nino?

I realize that I wrote most of this post with the assumption that you guys understand the general concept of El Nino conditions…but just in case that part of science class was a little fuzzy…here is a fairly simple explanation of what occurs during an “El Nino” year.

The term El Nino refers to a particular portion of a 3- to 10-year circulation pattern of ocean/atmospheric conditions that cycle primarily through the Pacific Ocean (but are believed to affect weather conditions throughout the world). The scientific community generally refers to this pattern as El Nino-Southern Oscillation (or ENSO) and it has two distinct phases on either ends of its intensity…El Nino (the warm part) and La Nina (the cold part).

When El Nino occurs it is because the usual pattern of trade winds in the Pacific Ocean along the equator are disrupted, and the winds that normally push warm water to the west away from Central America stop, and sometimes even blow the opposite direction.

Without the trade winds, warm water stays in position near Central America and begins to spread along the coasts of North and South America. Since warm water is basically the Sun’s energy stored as heat, it means that a significant amount of energy has been allowed to shift to a completely new position in the ocean. This shift has an incredible effect on the Pacific Storm Track…and has been linked to changes in weather all over the Earth.

The strength of an El Nino is generally measured by the increase in the water temperatures in the East Pacific as compared to the seasonal average. If water temps raise above the average it is considered El Nino (and if they drop below the average it is considered a La Nina).

Generally…for Southern California…El Nino has a positive effect on swell producing storms for our region…while La Nina has a negative effect. This isn’t 100% on either side…(it is possible to have a bad winter even with an El Nino)...but the trends do tend to follow those patterns.

Like I said…this is a very simple explanation of what occurs in the ENSO circulation…if you want more details, the Wikipedia entry is a pretty good place to start…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o-Southern_Oscillation

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Anyways…I hope this answers a few questions on El Nino and how it will hopefully lead to a better winter surf season. Personally I am ready to have a quality winter…no more one-hit wonders.

Cheers...here's to a good winter!

Adam

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

Tropical Update – TD-4E is now Hurricane Carlos

TD-4E has strengthened quite a bit since Friday morning. Over the past 36 hours the tropical depression quickly intensified into the named Tropical Storm Carlos…and now, by Saturday afternoon, Carlos has reached CAT-1 hurricane status (sustained winds of at least 65-knots near the core).

Currently Hurricane Carlos is about 700 or so miles SSW of the tip of Baja (1300-1400 miles from SoCal), moving west (270) at about 10 knots.







Carlos is already in the Southern California swell window and is likely producing some tropical swell for us that would arrive early next week…likely filling in some energy later on Monday but showing the strongest on Tuesday-Thursday of next week (if Carlos lives up to forecasts).

It is a little early for sizes since Carlos just got up to speed…and swell production is going to greatly depend on how long he lasts (and how he moves)…but at this point we can expect some increased tropical energy helping to fill in some of the gaps in the Southern Hemi swells that we have showing over the next week.

More details as Carlos continues to develop.

Tropical Update - Tropical Depression 04E

We have another new tropical system starting to spin to life in the NE Pacific Tropics. TD-04E strengthened into a Tropical Depression sometime last night...and is threatening to become Tropical Storm Carlos sometime today.

Current forecasts are showing TD-04E potentially becoming a hurricane as it moves off to the west early next week.





As you can see on the chart TD-04E is quite a bit further south than Blanca was (almost 500-600 miles further south). This extra distance and the flatter, faster moving, east-to-west storm track is going to limit swell production...but by how much? It is a bit early to tell at this point. TD-04E is in our swell window so any strengthening or intensification is going to mean some sort of waves for us...likely by early next week.

Anyway just wanted to give you guys a heads up...I’ll keep you posted as things develop.