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

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

Tuesday’s Surf – Back in action

Hey gang sorry I left you hanging for a couple of days…I took a trip to Mammoth over the weekend…where is snowed about 8- to 10-feet in about 40 hours. They didn’t open the whole mountain because of the wind and avalanche danger…but even the lower mountain had fresh powder almost every run. The fresh snow was sweet for snowboarding but the storm wiped out the internet connection…anyway on to the surf.

Tuesday looks surfable, at least from a wind and swell standpoint, but water quality is going to be bad everywhere. You definitely take your health into your hands paddling out in the nastiness that runs off after storms like these. We will have a mix of fading WNW storm swell and light winds on tap through the morning. Onshore winds and slightly smaller surf will roll through during the afternoon. Average spots will hold in the waist-shoulder high range while the standouts see some bigger sets through the morning.

Biggest surf will continue to show through San Diego, the South Bay, and Southern Ventura. Other regions will be smaller and less consistent.

Personally I am not going to surf…mostly because I don’t want to have another run-in with the “bird flu” but if you have to get in the water I would check out the beach breaks, particularly if there is a sandbar or jetty (or something) to focus the swell a little bit.

Long Range – we have more, longer-period, WNW swell lining up for the end of the week…looks like top spots could be back in overhead surf by Thursday/Friday. Make sure to check back here for updates (or read my wavewatch.com forecast for the heavy details.)

Swell Alert - New WNW swell for the Christmas Holiday

It looks like Mother Nature is going to be giving California surfers a Christmas present this year.

There is some new storm activity brewing up underneath the Aleutians, close to the Gulf of Alaska, that will likely send a good-sized WNW swell (280-300+) to California on December 24-25th.

Northern and Central California (basically any spot north of Point Conception) will see very large surf from this system, with wave heights easily breaking the double- to triple-overhead range at the exposed breaks. Standout deepwater breaks will see even bigger waves. Because this region is a little closer to the storm it will actually start seeing this swell arrive on the 23rd and then peak the 24th and 25th.

Southern California will see a smaller version of this swell. At this point this swell looks good for easy shoulder-head high surf at the NW facing breaks while the standout winter spots have overhead sets. Conditions are looking good too…looks like sunny skies and light to moderate offshore winds as the swell arrives. Look for this swell to build in on the 24th…and then peak in the afternoon into the 25th.

Make sure to check back...I will have more details on this swell, as we move closer to the holiday.

Tuesday’s surf – more waves and more weather

The surf will come up more on Tuesday…but it looks like rain…and maybe some S-SW winds will start to wreck it by the afternoon.

If you were in the water (or checking it) on Monday you probably noticed that a there was a little more WNW swell in the water. A few spots around Ventura and the South Bay looked like they had some decent surf during the dawn patrol.

This new burst of WNW swell will actually peak early Tuesday morning and should hold waves throughout the day. Most spots will be around waist-chest high+ while the standout NW facing breaks in the good winter areas (San Diego, Ventura, South Bay, and North OC) will have some shoulder-head high surf. Best spots may be a little bigger.
Winds are looking light through the morning but we may have a bit of a S-SE texture to it. SW winds in the 10-15 knot range will move through during the afternoon.

Your best bet for waves will be those winter spots that are protected from S-SE winds…the South Bay, parts of Central OC, Parts of Southern Ventura, and the La Jolla area all have breaks that stay clean on the southerly winds. Points and reefs if you can find them will probably have the best shape...beach breaks will be fun but probably not working quite as well.Unless you are on vacation and have all your Christmas shopping done I wouldn’t waste too much time driving anywhere. I think it will be worth checking your local spots but not sitting in traffic for an unreasonable amount of time.

Thursday’s Surf – Get some while you can

Overall Thursday is looking much, much smaller than Wednesday. The W-WNW pulse will be dropping quick and will fade to a more playful size by late in the day. Expect overhead waves at most spots through the morning. Santa Barbara and Ventura will start to fade out by mid-morning…so expect the points/reefs to get quite a bit smaller through the afternoon. San Diego will have the most staying power and should see consistently overhead surf through most of the day.

Our weather will likely start to change on Thursday as well. A new cold front is approaching and is expected to bring bad weather to SoCal on Friday and Saturday. Thursday is expected to start off with light S-SE winds around 0-10 knots…then shift more S-SW 10-20 knots by the afternoon/evening. Rain (and waterspouts according to the National Weather Service) are expected on Friday and Saturday.

Surfwise…if you are looking to surf “big” waves on Thursday you will have pretty much missed the boat. There will still be some overhead stuff at the well exposed breaks through the morning but it will drop to more manageable sizes by the afternoon. Personally I would get on it early for the dawn patrol…conditions look like they fall apart by the afternoon/evening and then stay pretty bad through the weekend.

Long-range…forecasts last week were showing another decent sized swell for this upcoming weekend…unfortunately that is no longer the case. It looks like the storm will move over SoCal before generating much surf…so we will get the bad weather without the benefit of the waves beforehand. We can expect some bumpy and blown out storm swell driving up wave heights on Saturday (and then dropping Sunday) but not much of it will be rideable and water quality will be questionable as well.

Wednesday’s Surf – More W swell for everyone.

The W swell will peak on Wednesday. I am sticking to the forecast that I posted earlier, which basically is calling for W-facing breaks to have overhead to well overhead sets. Top breaks will have double-overhead sets…and then standouts in San Diego and Ventura will have some almost triple-overhead waves.

Weather is looking decent again on Wednesday…winds are expected to be light/variable or even a little light SE for some areas. Look for W-NW winds 10-15 knots through the afternoon.

For the best surf…here is a copy paste from an earlier forecast

“If you are not interested in big waves you do have a few options…I would definitely check the S-facing summer spots…sometimes on W swells you will get some of the energy to wrap in a break that wouldn’t normally pick it up. In the process of wrapping in the swell loses a lot of energy and will be much more manageable sizewise when it finally arrives.”

Surfing on Tuesday – the big W-WNW’er starts to arrive

Tuesday will be a good surf day…but it may get too big for most people’s comfort level (including mine) by the end of the day.

The first part of the new W-WNW swell begins arriving on Tuesday and will build quickly through the day, eventually peaking overnight into Wednesday. Look for this swell to fill in fast in areas like Santa Barbara and Ventura (which are actually located a little more to the West and so will get the swell earlier). LA County, OC, and San Diego will start off slower but will see a big jump by the afternoon.

Sizewise as this swell really gets going (particularly as it peaks into early Wednesday) we can expect most W-facing spots to see consistently overhead to well overhead surf…standout W-facing breaks will go double-overhead+ and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some nearly triple-overhead sets at breaks that focus these types of swell. Needless to say shape will be pretty raw, stacked up, and we can expect a lot of current to paddle against at the more exposed spots.

If you are not interested in big waves you do have a few options…I would definitely check the S-facing summer spots…sometimes on W swells you will get some of the energy to wrap in a break that wouldn’t normally pick it up. In the process of wrapping in the swell loses a lot of energy and will be much more manageable sizewise when it finally arrives.

Weather is looking decent, particularly for the morning. Winds are expected to be light/variable to light offshore through the morning…then shift a little more onshore out of the NW around 10 knots during the afternoon.

Here is a cool satellite photo of the storm sending in this swell…look how long the fetch is!




Check out the NWS satellite loop to see this bad boy in action.
Link to NWS NPAC Satellite Loop.

Monday’s waves – get warmed up for the W swell

Monday looks fun, not great or big, just sort of playful. Water quality will still be an issue…I think you will want to avoid the rivers and storm-drains if you want to stay healthy but it will be cleaner than the weekend. (You can always check out www.healthebay.org for the water quality report card).

Surfwise we will have a mix of new W-WNW swell moving in…this one is sort of a combo of energy from that swell that hit Hawaii over the weekend and the initial formation of the system that will crank out the bigger W-WNW swell in a couple of days. What does that really mean from a surf standpoint? Well that I am a weather-nerd of the first degree…oh and that we will get a slight increase in wave heights at the winter spots throughout the day.

Waves will start off on the small side…mostly waist-chest high for most areas, with some slightly bigger sets in San Diego and Ventura. By the afternoon average spots will be closer to shoulder high while the standouts in Ventura see some inconsistent head high sets mixing in.

Weather looks ok…winds will be light in the morning but expect increasing NW winds 10-15+ knots by the end of the day.

Big WNW swell update: Things are still looking good for the swell on Tuesday and Wednesday. I think we should get a pretty big jump in swell on Tuesday but the meat of the swell will still really arrive overnight and into Wednesday. That being said…winds are looking decent on Tuesday and with that swell starting to fill in as we move throughout the day…I am seriously considering heading northward and trying to pick off a few waves as it arrives.

Here is a random WAM (Nave WWIII wave heights) picture showing the significant wave heights in the North Pacific.

First real W-WNW swell of the season arrives next week!

Looks like SoCal will have its first solid W-WNW swell of the winter next week.

A new storm is forecast to form between Hawaii and California in about 2-3 days and then, as it tracks up into the Gulf of Alaska, kick out a fairly strong W-WNW swell (270-290+300) for Southern California.





There will already be some WNW swell in the water when this new one starts to arrive so most spots will already have waves…but expect the more northerly SoCal regions (Santa Barbara and Ventura) to start seeing a fairly significant increase in size late on Tuesday (Dec 4th). The southerly regions…mostly OC and San Diego may see a slight bump before sundown but not as much as spots further up the coast.

It looks like the bulk of the swell will start to push in overnight and peak on Wednesday Dec 5th.

Like I said this swell is looking pretty strong. At this point, (and this is me staying on the conservative side), I think most exposed W-facing breaks will see overhead+ surf. Standout W facing breaks in both Ventura and San Diego will be consistently several feet overhead and probably have sets nearing double-overhead mix in at times.

Weather may be an issue for this swell, or at least the wind may be a problem…the storm moves near the California coast and we may see some of it spill over into our local conditions. At this point it looks surfable but a lot depends on how the system behaves after it actually forms.

Finding the best surf:
W-WNW swells, like this one, send waves to almost all areas in SoCal…finding the right spot depends a lot on what sort of wave you like to surf. If winds cooperate this swell will be worth driving for…probably even taking off work if you have to.

Shapewise if you are looking for big dumpy beach breaks or heavy reefs…then San Diego and Southern Ventura will be good areas to check out. If you are looking for long, but likely very crowded, point-breaks then head to Santa Barbara. LA and OC will also have a decent mix of waves, even some heavy spots, but expect a lot of closeouts unless you have a reef, point, or sandbar to break up the swell.

This is just the initial heads up so make sure to check back for more updates as we get closer to the swell arriving.