Waves for the Weekend – Funky Chicken and more rain

At first glance this doesn’t look like a surf weekend…but there may be a little wriggle-room (surf-room) Saturday morning.

Overall this weekend looks pretty sloppy…sure there will be some new stormy W swell but the winds are forecast to stay onshore out of the west pretty much the whole weekend and bring another inch+ of rain to the coastal areas. The swell, really a WSW-W-WNW swell mix (260-300), will be arriving fast Friday evening and will eventually peak Saturday afternoon and on into Sunday.

Here are the swell forecasts for both days…

Saturday



Sunday



Sizewise, once the swell starts to peak on Saturday afternoon, I am expecting surf in the shoulder-head high range for most of the average W facing breaks. The standout spots will be shoulder-overhead with sets going a few feet overhead at times. These waves will hold overnight into Sunday…and then fade slowly as we move into Monday.

Weather in general will be pretty junky this weekend…but check out the wind/weather models for Saturday morning…



The COAMPS is calling for steady, sort of nasty looking, W winds for the morning…



But the NWS/NOAA models are showing some lighter morning winds and even a bit of circulation putting S-SE winds going semi-offshore in a few areas.

Personally I don’t believe either model all that much…they both have been a little aggressive in estimating how fast a storm will push through our area during our last few systems. Generally the storms have come in later and slower moving than these models have predicted…I have a feeling that actual conditions are going to be somewhere in the middle of those two. That being said I think that Saturday morning will be our best chance for surf…just don’t commit a lot of time to trying to get to the beach. I would give the cams a check in the morning…maybe check out the live winds if you can…and make sure that, even if the wind is light, that there isn’t a bunch of funk still on the water.

The models both agree that Sunday will be windier…W winds around 10-15 knots with gusts still topping out around 20 knots in some areas.



So the weekend doesn’t look all that good…the weather is going to do a lot to screw up conditions/surf-shape. Add in the “even more rain” factor and junky sloppy surf, with poor water quality, just doesn’t sound that inviting. I would still try and keep an eye on Saturday morning…but don’t hold your breath.

Make sure to check out the regional forecasts for the details for each county.

Regional/County Forecasts

Santa Barbara Surf Forecast
Ventura County Surf Forecast
Los Angeles County Surf Forecast
Orange County Surf Forecast
San Diego Surf Forecast

Here are the tides…

02/20/2010 Saturday
12:02AM LST 4.5 H
07:37AM LST 1.2 L
01:19PM LST 2.4 H
05:32PM LST 1.9 L

02/21/2010 Sunday
12:56AM LST 4.5 H
09:25AM LST 0.9 L

Rain and Wind for the Weekend – Looking Nasty

This won’t be much of a surf weekend…the weather will be pretty lame and onshore winds are going to kill it on Sunday.

Hey I wanted to say thanks to you guys for filling out the survey…I am getting a lot of good responses…I will probably close it down on Sunday (so I can get the after action stuff done early next week)…If you haven’t responded yet, here is the link

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

Ok back to the surf….In the water on Saturday we are going to have slowly fading WNW energy, mostly leftovers from earlier in the week but with a mix of other medium period energy from fronts following that bigger one…in general it will be smaller though. We will also have a mix of building S-SW windswell moving in with the front.



On Saturday look for wave heights to hold around waist-chest high+ at the average WNW facing breaks. Top spots will be in the chest-head high range with a few inconsistent bigger sets lurking around out there.

Conditions look pretty lame…S-SW winds around 10-15 knots are expected to hold throughout the day and then strengthen up to about 15-20 knots by the afternoon. Rain, clouds, and other nastiness will push through all day.

One thing worth noting is that the S winds don’t totally blow out every spot…so there may be a little surf-wiggle-room during the dawn patrol. If you don’t mind the rain, you might want to give the S protected spots a look, particularly if they like the windswell combo stuff we have in the water for Saturday morning.



On Sunday the windswell builds back up, but so do the onshore winds, so it doesn’t look very surfable.



Wave heights will start off similar to Saturday but I expect chundery mess of WNW slop moving in later in the day as the W-NW winds top out around 20 knots.

Basically at this point…with the onshore W winds in the forecast…I think Sunday will be a write-off.



So not super exciting this weekend…I would just keep a weather eye on the protected spots on Saturday, but other than that we can expect more rain and onshore wind. Stay dry and have a good one.

Here are the tides…

12/12/2009 Saturday
05:41AM LST 5.9 H
01:04PM LST -0.3 L
07:15PM LST 3.5 H

12/13/2009 Sunday
12:00AM LST 2.0 L
06:19AM LST 6.0 H
01:47PM LST -0.7 L
08:07PM LST 3.6 H