Tuesday’s Surf – Still a bit breezy

Tuesday won’t be a surf day.

The SW swells from the weekend will continue to back down (not that they are showing all that much anyway) and the local windswell will continue to increase…along with the onshore wind.



Most spots will be in the waist-high range with some chest-shoulder high+ sets for the NW standouts (mostly in South San Diego) will see some head high sets at the breaks that focus/like NW windswell.

We may see some pockets of semi-clean conditions really early in the morning but mostly NW winds are forecast to pick up early through midmorning…so a lot of breaks will get onshore chop pushing in pretty fast. These WNW-NW winds will end up topping out 10-15+ before lunch. NW winds 15-20 knots will be on tap for the afternoon. Stupid wind.



I wouldn’t spend much time looking for surf tomorrow...there isn’t a ton of swell in the water and even the windswell is pretty anemic, add that to the onshore winds and funky morning tides and you have a pretty good reason to stay in bed. You might spend a couple of minutes checking it if you live close to the beach and the NW winds don’t work your break over that bad but other than that save your gas for later this week. Personally I am getting some drywall work done…so you can see how fired up I am about this swell.

Here are the tides…

05/11/2010 Tuesday
02:38AM LDT 0.1 L
08:38AM LDT 3.6 H
01:57PM LDT 1.4 L
08:05PM LDT 5.5 H

Wednesday Waves – More swell with weather in the afternoon

Wednesday is looking a bit funky…there will be new swell in the water, but an approaching cold-front may tweak winds a bit.

We have another round of WNW-NW swell (285-300) that will peak on Wednesday. A lot of this energy is coming in pretty NW in the swell direction (290-300+) so it looks like the biggest surf will be in South San Diego, with Ventura and the South Bay running a close second. There will also be a touch of SW swell (200-220) in the water but it is going to get steamrolled by the more dominant WNW-NW energy.



Look for the average WNW facing breaks to see surf in the shoulder-overhead range on Wednesday with some bigger sets showing a little inconsistently at times. The top NW facing breaks will have surf more in the head high to a couple of feet overhead range with some sets going several feet overhead mixing in on the more favorable parts of the tide swing.

Weather is where we get a little screwed…yet another cold front is forecast to move into the area throughout the day on Wednesday. The timing of this front is still a bit suspect but it looks like some of the wind/weather may start creeping through early in the day, hitting up around SB and Ventura in the morning and then pushing southward through midday and into the afternoon. If this is the case we can expect some W-NW winds around 10-14 knots for SB and Ventura areas…and then sort of variable winds in the other regions. Check out the COAMPS model for around sunrise tomorrow…you can see that funky column of wind tug-o-war setting up over the water between the coast and Catalina. I think that it might be semi-manageable in the early morning, particularly at spots that have some protection from the wind (things like kelp, cliffs, or something else to block the breeze)…but our best bet is going to be giving the wind and surf cams a check in the morning before driving too far.



If you live in the LA/OC/SD areas I would try and keep an eye on things for the morning…we have plenty of swell in the water, the tides are actually sort of good for the early morning, and if we can get the wind to play ball we might have a shot at a halfway decent morning session. I would look for the best shape at points and reefs that can handle the swell…beach breaks may be a bit walled out.

Sorry about the weird update pattern the last few days…my computer has been a bit wonky and I am still in the process of sorting it out. I think this video sums up my feelings about computer issues the best…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ntr-pw_6C0

No regional updates tonight…hopefully I will have everything up and running normally tomorrow.

Here are the tides…

03/03/2010 Wednesday
04:55AM LST -0.1 L
10:48AM LST 4.3 H
04:43PM LST 0.6 L
10:58PM LST 5.4 H