Surf for Friday – Adding a touch more size to the forecast

Friday will be another surf day...and I am going to revise my long-range forecast from this morning and add a little bit more size to tomorrow.

I am looking at the buoys this afternoon and it looks like the tropical swell from Ignacio is coming in a little bigger than I was thinking...not a ton...but enough that I think that our sizes from Thursday will continue into Friday, particularly at the S facing breaks.

So for tomorrow we can expect a mix of slowly fading, but still healthy S swell (180-190), continuing tropical S-SW swell (180-200) from Ignacio, and some very background NW windswell. Check out the current CDIP breakdown...

Santa Barbara


Los Angeles


Orange County


San Diego


Surfwise we can expect the average S-facing spots to be in the chest-shoulder high range. The better S facing spots will be more consistently in the shoulder-head high range on sets. Look for the standouts, mostly through Orange County, to be in the shoulder-overhead range on sets...pretty consistent through the morning.

Winds look good for the early morning...more of the light/variable to light offshore during the dawn patrol. Look for variable onshore texture starting to creep in around midmorning and increasing out of the WNW 10-14 knots by the afternoon.



I think that the S-facing points and reefs are going to be the call again tomorrow. The beach breaks will continue to be a bit walled up...but with the shorter swell periods on the mix of swells I think that they will be a bit more makeable if the sand is good, or they have something to break up the swell. I would try and get on it early again, mostly because of the winds. The tides are a bit funky tomorrow...we don’t see much of a low-tide...so you might want to keep the hunt focused at spots that can handle a little more water.

Here are the tides. Hope you guys score a few...

07:32AM LDT 3.3 H
10:17AM LDT 3.2 L
04:47PM LDT 4.7 H

Tropical Update – Tropical Storm Ignacio

Tropical Depression 12e strengthened into Tropical Storm Ignacio this evening.



TS Ignacio is currently located about 650 miles SW of the tip of Baja and is in the S-SSE swell window for Southern California. Right now Ignacio isn’t a huge storm…core wind speeds are holding around 40-knots with some 50-knot gusts...and the good parts of fetch, the ones that are aiming towards SoCal are about 50-60 miles across.

Still he is going to be intensifying, at least according to forecasts, and could become a fairly intense tropical storm…he is not expected to reach hurricane strength at this time. You can see the convection (the cloud rotation) around the low in this satellite photo…



The more convection we see, and the more Ignacio looks like a hurricane, the better it is for swell production.

Another good factor…is his storm track…current forecasts have him moving WNW (290-degrees) at about 10-knots. This WNW path is actually supposed to steepen as he intensifies, which means that the stronger parts of the storm will be better aligned toward SoCal and could potentially be better for setting up swell.

From a surf standpoint I think that we will get some waves from Ignacio…nothing huge…but enough to ride. It looks like the first S swell (180) will arrive from Ignacio on Thursday. Since there will still be plenty of Southern Hemi swell in the water I don’t know that we are going to really be able to tell that the tropical swell is showing. Based on today’s forecast it looks like any energy from Ignacio would peak as we head into Saturday, hopefully the tropical energy will help prop up wave heights from our fading Southern Hemi…and keep us in consistent, but playful sized (chest-shoulder high) surf through the upcoming weekend.