Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 1/04/2010

Forecast Overview

Small WNW-NW energy moves in on Tuesday and holds through the middle of the week. New, larger WNW swell starts to arrive on Thursday and will set up overhead surf for the top NW spots through Friday and into the upcoming weekend. More overhead WNW surf on tap for next week as well.

Short Range (next 4 days)

Tuesday
New mix of W-WNW swell (275-295) moves in on Tuesday, building slowly throughout the day as it mixes with some weak background S-SW energy. Most spots will start off slow in the knee to occasionally waist high range. Better WNW facing breaks will be more in the knee-chest high range. Standout NW spots, mostly through Ventura in the morning…but filling in further south throughout the day, will have some waist-chest high surf with some inconsistent shoulder high sets on the lower tides. Winds/Weather: Winds look good, mostly light and variable to a mild/moderate offshore flow. Look for stiffer offshore winds through the usual wind prone areas of LA/Ven/SB…and lighter winds in SD and OC. Onshore flow around 8-10+ knots for the afternoon.



Wednesday
The W-WNW combo (280-300 shifting a bit more NW’erly) and weak S-SW swells will hold on Wednesday. Most breaks stay around knee-waist high with some chest high sets. Better WNW-spots see some chest-high+ sets while the standout NW spots stay around waist-shoulder high. Winds/Weather: Still nice on Wednesday…mostly clean conditions with light and variable winds through the morning and only moderate onshore WNW flow around 10-14 knots for the afternoon.



Thursday
The surf starts to pick up on Thursday thanks to a new WNW swell (280-300) that starts to arrive throughout the day (showing strongest by the afternoon). For the morning wave heights will get a little bump in size thanks to a preceding short-period WNW’er (280-300)…most spots will be in the waist-chest high range. The top NW spots will be around chest-shoulder high on the sets. The bigger WNW pulse will start sending in some really long-period energy (19-20 second stuff) by the afternoon and it looks like the spots that can focus that sort of energy will have some chest-head high surf by the end of the day…possibly even bigger at the top NW standouts up around Ventura (since it is located a little further off to the NW). Winds/Weather: mostly clean conditions with light and variable winds through the morning and only moderate onshore WNW flow around 10-14 knots for the afternoon.



Friday
At this point Friday is definitely going to be a surf day. The W-WNW swell (270-300) that started hitting on Thursday will fill in more overnight and peak Friday morning. The swell direction is pretty broad (since the storm was pretty large scale) but it looks like the peak direction is going to be around the 280-300 range (probably really 285-300), which means that the WNW-NW facing spots will be the best and the W facing spots, while they will have surf, will be a bit smaller thanks to swell shadowing. Fortunately it looks like a pretty big swell…most of the average W-WNW facing breaks will be in the chest-head high range. The better WNW spots will be more consistently in the shoulder-overhead+ range with sets going a couple of feet overhead on the better tides. Standout NW spots, mostly in Ventura, San Diego, and the South Bay, will be running consistently head high to overhead+ but with some sets going a few feet+ overhead at times. Winds/Weather: Winds and weather look good…NE winds around 10-15 knots are expected to develop through the morning and stay light onshore to light and variable by the afternoon.



Long-Range

North Pacific
The fun continues in the North Pacific forecast this week…the hyper NPAC storm track continues to sit across the mid-latitudes cranking out swell. Sure there are a few little gaps between the bigger storms but overall it hasn’t gone totally flat for longer than a couple of days for a while now.

This week we will start off a little slow…fading energy from the weekend dropped off fast on Monday but there is a smaller pulse of WNW-NW energy (280-300) that will move in on Tuesday and hold into Wednesday. This is actually the mix of a couple of different swells but they should be able to blend pretty well. The only bummer is that this storm looked a little better last long-range forecast but it failed to produce much energy in a useable swell direction (a lot of the energy is too north). Anyway…it will keep us in rideable if sort of small/soft waves through the middle of the week.

The next swell, the one that starts filling in Late Thursday (peaking Friday and into Saturday) looks pretty good. This storm is currently spinning just North of Hawaii and it will be putting the finishing touches on the WNW swell over the next 30 or so hours. Check it out…



That is a fairly large low pressure…with a substantial fetch set up right in our WNW swell window. Here it is on the Visible Satellite image.



And on the WINDSAT (a replacement data set for the QUIKSCAT that I had used in the past).



And finally…how the wavewatchIII model is expecting all of that lovely wind to create.



At this point it looks like a head high to well-overhead W-WNW swell filling in with long-period energy later on Thursday and then the peak of the swell hitting throughout Socal on Friday (Jan 8). The energy will hold into early Saturday and then start to drop off slightly on Sunday.

Further out looking at the forecast charts it looks like that WNW swell will continue into early next week…though this part of the swell hasn’t formed yet. Based on today’s forecast run it looks like a following set of low-pressures will send in more overlapping energy that will jump on the tail of the first swell holding solid overhead+ surf at the top spots through at least early next week…but possibly through the middle of next week.



South Pacific
The South Pacific isn’t totally shut down anymore…we are starting to see a couple of active hot spots brewing up around Antarctica that will be sending us some small, but at least rideable, S-SW swells from the SPAC. One area is the usually active region SE of New Zealand, which is showing some decent 30-40 knots of fetch forming over the next few days that could have some new SW swell on our beaches around Jan 10th.



Unfortunately that swell has to pass through the SPAC islands shadow (around Tahiti) so a lot of the size and consistency are going to get chewed out of it…still anything is better than the snoozefest that we had through the end of the 2009.



The other spot worth keeping an eye on is directly south of Southern California…a ridge of pressure across the SSW portion of our swell window has this stretch of ocean doing some weird (in a good way) things. The way the ridge is positioned it lets storms slip up around the 120W longitude line and push fairly northward before sliding over towards Chile. These storms are sending out a few small, but rideable pulses of S-SSE swell (170-190) that have hit over the last week or so. It looks like more is on the way for this week, with more heading in for the upcoming weekend. Again nothing to get super excited about but it should keep a little cross up energy showing at the combo breaks.

Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Thurday, January 7th, 2010

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

Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 12/31/2009

Happy New Year’s!

Forecast Overview

Surfwise we will have a good start to 2010 thanks to a very active North Pacific. Overlapping W-WNW swells will push in over the next few days mixing with some decent winds and some much smaller S-SW pulses. Looks like more storms are brewing in the forecast charts…so expect more surf rolling through most of next week and a potentially bigger shot of WNW energy around the 9th. (2010…holy future batman…It just hit me that my first son will graduate from high school in 2023! that is, unless we are still fighting skynet…crazy)

Short Range (next 4 days)

Friday – New Year’s Day 2010
WNW-NW swell (285-300) holds on Friday…mixing with some much smaller S-SW pulses. The morning is going to be really swampy with a 6.5’+ high tide hitting around 8:45am. Most spots will be in the waist-chest high range with some inconsistent shoulder high sets on the lower tides. The standout NW facing breaks will be in the chest-head high range with some overhead sets coming through on the lower tides. Winds/Weather: Look for mostly light and variable to light offshore winds through the morning. NW winds around 10-15 knots move in through the afternoon but may try to lay down later in the evening.



Saturday
Another shot of WNW energy (this one more in the 280-300 range) arrives on Saturday and mixes with the fading WNW-NW energy from earlier in the week. Small S-SW pulses (170-185 and 210-220) hold in the background. The morning tide will still be an issue but as the peak pushes back to 9:30am there may be a little more of a dawn patrol window opening. Average spots will get a little more size…more chest-shoulder high on the lower tides. The better WNW facing breaks will be in the chest-head high range while the standout NW breaks (mostly in San Diego, Ventura, and the South Bay) will be in the shoulder-head high+ range with a few overhead+ sets mixing in on the lower afternoon tides. Winds/Weather: Still pretty nice with variable/offshore winds in the morning and NW winds around 10-14 knots for the afternoon.



Sunday
The WNW mix (280-300) starts to lose a little steam but still puts up plenty of waves. The high tide will still be bothering the morning/mid-morning but it will be both smaller is size and its peak will be further back to about 10:15…so again it looks like more of an earlier morning window opening. Sizewise we can expect more chest-shoulder high surf at the average WNW facing breaks. Standout NW spots see consistent chest-head high surf with some low-tide sets going overhead at times. Winds/Weather: Still pretty good…mostly light and variable morning winds but with a bit more NW flow setting up around Santa Barbara and Ventura. Look for increasing WNW-winds around 10-18 knots by the afternoon.



Monday
The WNW energy will back off fast…not completely dropping out but it will feel considerably smaller than Sunday. Most spots will back down into the knee-waist high range with some chest high sets. Standout NW facing breaks will be more in the waist-chest high range but with a few shoulder high sets on the lower tides in the early morning. Winds/Weather: Weather will be breaking down a bit by early next week…nothing horrible but it looks like a variable onshore texture picking up pretty early in the day and then moderate onshore flow around 12-18 knots by the afternoon.



Long-Range

North Pacific
Like I mentioned in the overview…this has already been a pretty good winter…and it looks like our good wave fortune is going to continue into the early part of the new year. The North Pacific continues to be an extremely active ocean, with several well positioned storms moving or forecasted to move through our swell window over the next week. The storm track is operating right across the edge of the mid-latitudes which means that storms that spin off of Asia track across the North Pacific spending the majority of their time “over-water” in our swell window. In the past couple of seasons the storm track has been positioned much closer to the Aleutians which forced storms to drop down to send us surf…here check out the current set up…you can see the wind arrows tracking across the NPAC below the 300-degree swell-direction cutoff that we have in Socal.



And here is the wave heights set up by those winds…



As you can see the storms are stacking up across the Pacific…which means that we will be seeing more WNW swell on the way. We have a couple of overlapping WNW swells that hit Friday and into the weekend…nothing huge but good enough for some overhead waves at the standout NW breaks, particularly at spots that like the medium/short period swell energy. These waves will start to fade Sunday afternoon and continue to drop through Monday.

A new shot of W-WNW swell moves in on the 5th again setting up a round of playful chest-head high surf at the WNW facing spots and overhead sets at the standout NW breaks. These will hold through the 6th and then fade slowly through the 7-8th as a following, but smaller WNW pulse keeps the surf from dropping too fast.

Further out that big blob of low-pressure North of Hawaii continues to cycle through mid-latitude storms, and the next intense looking system will likely come through in about 4-5 days…if it lives up to forecasts we could be looking at another solid shot of WNW energy for around the 9-10th.

South Pacific
The South Pacific isn’t totally shut down anymore…we are starting to see a couple of active hot spots brewing up around Antarctica that will be sending us some small, but at least rideable, S-SW swells from the SPAC. One area is the usually active region SE of New Zealand, which is showing some decent 30-40 knots of fetch forming over the next few days that could have some new SW swell on our beaches around Jan 10th.



Unfortunately that swell has to pass through the SPAC islands shadow (around Tahiti) so a lot of the size and consistency are going to get chewed out of it…still anything is better than the snoozefest that we had through the end of the 2009.



The other spot worth keeping an eye on is directly south of Southern California…a ridge of pressure across the SSW portion of our swell window has this stretch of ocean doing some weird (in a good way) things. The way the ridge is positioned it lets storms slip up around the 120W longitude line and push fairly northward before sliding over towards Chile. These storms are sending out a few small, but rideable pulses of S-SSE swell (170-190) that have hit over the last week or so. It looks like more is on the way for this upcoming weekend and for a lot of next week, with more heading in for the following weekend. Again nothing to get super excited about but it should keep a little cross up energy showing at the combo breaks.

Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Thurday, December 31st, 2009

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

Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 12/24/2009

Forecast Overview

Happy Holidays Everyone!



Looks like we are going to have some fun surf for the next few days…a new round of playful WNW swell moves in on Christmas and mixes with some smaller S swell. This will drop a little on Saturday but remain fun-sized and rideable. A bigger W-WNW swell hits on Sunday and will hold waves through Monday and the first part of next week.

Short Range (next 4 days)

Friday – Christmas Day
Looks like Santa is going to bring us a fun pulse of combo swell…we will have a new W-WNW swell (275-300), some local windswell, and some S swell (175-190). Most spots will continue to be playful in the waist-chest high range with some occasional shoulder high peaks as the swells blend together. Top WNW-NW facing breaks and the best NW combo spots mostly through San Diego, will be in the chest-head high range with some overhead sets mixing as well. The bigger waves will be a little inconsistent but there should be enough inbetweeners for you to try out the new board that Santa got you. Winds/Weather: Clean conditions with light-variable to light-offshore flow in the morning. Some weak to moderate W-WNW winds around 8-10 knots develop through the afternoon.



Saturday
The WNW swell (now 285-300) that filled in on Christmas will be losing a little steam, while the weaker S swell holds in the background. Most spots will have surf in the waist-chest high range with some rare shoulder high waves. Standout NW facing breaks will continue to see shoulder-head high surf with some much less consistent head high+ sets mixing in. Winds/Weather: Look for clean conditions for the morning with mostly light and variable winds. Building onshore bump around 10-14 knots out of the WNW will push in through the afternoon.



Sunday
New W-WNW swell (275-300) sends in some more consistent and larger surf as we move through the dawn patrol…with both the size and the consistency of the bigger sets increasing as we head toward the afternoon. Look for most W-WNW facing breaks to see shoulder-overhead surf while the standout NW breaks, mostly in Ventura, the South Bay, and San Diego, see consistently head high to a couple of feet overhead surf and some bigger sets going a few feet overhead (possibly bigger down toward Southern SD). Winds/Weather: Winds and weather look decent, more light and variable conditions early in the day and only moderate onshore bump (around 10-12 knots) for the afternoon.



Monday
Overall surf heights look about the same as Sunday as the W-WNW swell peaks and possibly pulls in a little more short-period energy thanks to a local cold front that moves through the area. Right now I am a little iffy on the size increase but the potential is there. At this point expect more shoulder-overhead surf for the average spots and sets going a few feet overhead at the top spots. Winds/Weather: Getting a little funky, chance of rain and some increasing onshore winds as the cold front moves in. This may end up being sort of a mild-moderate front so winds may not be too bad…but I would definitely keep in mind that conditions won’t be as good as the weekend.



Long-Range

North Pacific
Still lots of storm and swell activity setting up in the long-range forecast…as you read in the short-range there is a solid looking WNW swell (275-300) that arrives on Sunday Dec 27 and begins peaking that night and holding strong (if not bigger) into Dec 28. Weather nerd warning: Here is a little video that I put together showing the storm on the NOAA/GOES satellites…since I have some new screen capture software you can see the mouse moving around. I would watch it in HD if you can...click the HD button on the player.



The most important things that I was looking for in that animation was the position, movement track, and the overall size of this system…as you watch the video you can see me engage the lat/long overlay that helps me estimate all three. Further in the video I pick the HDW-Low winds (which are the High-Density Satellite Derived winds from 0-10,000) and see what they have been estimating. Lastly I pull in the image through the zoom feature, which is nice to get a closer look at the circulation of the storm. In particular I am looking at the clouds behind the front of the storm…these are pretty shredded and almost look like a bunch of fast moving cotton balls or popcorn...these are a good thing to see because it means that the wind throughout that part of the storm is blowing from the upper atmosphere all the way down to the surface, which is where it produces our surf. The more shredded the warmer, lower level clouds (the dark grey, which equals warmer stuff in the IR), the more the wind is getting time over the water.

In comparing these satellite images against the WINDSAT data, the GFS wind/weather model, as well as the wavewatchIII model it looks like everything is in pretty good agreement with this storm.









From a surf perspective, I am seeing decent circulation and size for that storm but it stopped tracking East and is now sort holding position just on the edge of the Gulf of Alaska. This isn’t a totally horrible thing but it does mean that the really intense part of the storm won’t get much closer to Socal, which means more swell decay as the energy moves toward us, which eventually means smaller surf.

Based on all of this…I am still expecting the swell to arrive in Socal late on Saturday night and be filling in by morning on the 27th…most exposed spots should have new waves for the dawn patrol but won’t see the biggest size until later in the afternoon/evening. By then we can expect almost all W-WNW facing breaks to have surf in the shoulder-head high range with some less consistent overhead faces sneaking in at times. The standout NW facing breaks will be running consistently head high with sets hitting a couple feet to a few feet overhead. The best deepwater breaks down toward Southern SD may have some bigger sets. This swell looks like it will peak overnight into Monday but may have some wind/weather problems as a local cold front moves into the area.

Further Out there are still a couple of storms showing in the long-range charts (though not as intense as the storm we currently have running through the NPAC). If these pull together the way the forecast thinks they will we should see more WNW energy around the 31st and possibly through the first few days of 2010.

South Pacific
Most of the South Pacific is still pretty boring…mostly just the summer laziness that sets up down there while it is out of storm season…but there was one area of decent looking fetch that spun up straight south of Socal about a week ago.



Anyway this fetch hung around in a decent position for a couple of days and it looks like we are going to see some playful chest-shoulder high S swell (175-190) that arrives on the 25-26th. I am not sure how consistent it will be, since the storm wasn’t that intense and it was sort of moving at a weird angle (not directly towards us which would have been the best). Still it looks like some fun surf at the better s-facing spots…and maybe even some fun combo peaks as it mixes with the steady WNW-NW energy.

Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009

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

Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 12/21/2009

Forecast Overview

Looks like steady, overlapping W-WNW-NW swells will continue to push in as we move throughout the week. Winds and weather will get a little funky on Tuesday as the first swell peaks but conditions should clean up fast letting us get back into groomed shape by Thursday. Look for some small S-SSW swell to hang in the background for the next few days and then a slightly stronger shot of S swell to arrive as we head into next weekend.

Short Range (next 3 days)

Tuesday
Is not looking like a surf day. In fact it is looking downright ugly. A dry-cold front is expect to spin up NW winds and windswell to mix with the medium/short-period W-WNW energy that we saw come up on Monday. Wave heights will be in the chest-head high range for most exposed spots while top spots go a couple of feet overhead, but unfortunately shape is going to be pretty poor almost everywhere due to the stiff onshore W-WNW winds that snap through around 15-20 knots throughout the day. Winds/Weather: Breezy, cold, and onshore conditions will be on tap through the morning. Look for W-WNW winds around 10-15 knots early…and then gusts hitting 15-20+ knots by the afternoon.



Wednesday
Still looks a little lumpy on Wednesday but conditions should clean up in a few areas, particularly around Orange and San Diego Counties. Our W-WNW swell mix will continue to hold with plenty of local windswell and some longer-period NW swell (290-300) that will fill later in the day. Small SSW swell will hold through the background. Most spots will continue to see chunky, stacked up chest-shoulder high surf with some bigger sets mixing in at spots that like the windswell shape. Top NW facing breaks, mostly through Ventura, the South Bay, and San Diego will have shoulder-overhead surf with some sets going a couple of feet overhead at times. Winds/Weather: Winds are forecast to shift out of the NNW for Santa Barbara and Ventura (which leaves some cleaner conditions here and there.) Down in LA, OC and SD, the winds will be more Northerly, which will put sideshore to offshore flow along most breaks. I don’t think it will be super clean, particularly since the swell will be lumpy, but it won’t be the hacked up mess that rolled through on Tuesday.



Thursday
Will see a mix of fading WNW energy (that wind/stormswell mix), some new WNW-NW swell (285-300) that fills in a little more and gets a little more WNW’erly, as well as another boost of background S swell (175-190). Most spots are going to continue to run in the playful waist-chest high range while the top NW facing breaks see some chest-head high surf. Winds/Weather: New ridge of high-pressure is expected to build in on Thursday, pushing the morning winds into a light offshore flow and starting to warm up air temps again. Look for clean conditions in the morning and light to mild winds on tap for the afternoon.



Christmas Friday
Looks like Santa is going to bring us a fun pulse of combo swell…we will have a new W-WNW swell (275-300), some local windswell, and some S swell (175-190). At this point it looks like a little bit of a slow start to the morning but the swell mix will fill in more as we move throughout the day. Most spots will continue to be playful in the waist-chest high range with some occasional shoulder high peaks as the swells blend together. Top WNW-NW facing breaks and the best NW combo spots, will be in the chest-head high range with some overhead+ sets mixing as well. The bigger waves will be a little inconsistent but there should be enough inbetweeners for you to try out the new board that santa got you. Winds/Weather: Clean conditions with light-variable to light-offshore flow in the morning. Some weak to moderate W-WNW winds around 8-10 knots develop through the afternoon.



Long-Range

North Pacific
Lots and lots of storm activity lining up in the North Pacific…I know I said it last week but this winter is so much better than last year that it is getting comical. Check this out…I pulled the wavewatchIII swell charts and stacked them up into one image and dropped numbers on each of the swell events that it has in the forecast. Currently it is showing 6 different swells that will blend in pretty much a long string of surf that will stretch through the end of 2009 and probably into the first few days of 2010.



To get a little more detailed…right now I am for sure expecting a mix of W-WNW wind/storm swell that will pulse up on Monday, peak overnight into Tuesday, and then start a slow fade through Wednesday/Thursday. This one looks good for head high to overhead surf at the top spots but will have some wind issues as a cold-front rolls through.

The next swell following this first batch will arrive throughout the day on Christmas…it will be another WNW-NW swell (275-300 but with most of the energy around 285-300) that comes through with some longer swell periods. Looks good for chest-shoulder waves at most WNW-NW spots and some inconsistent overhead sets at the top NW breaks.

Further out, check out swell #4 on those images…yeah the dark red one. The wind/swell models have been showing that forming for a few days now and they seem to really like it despite the fact that the winds aren’t incredibly strong. I am a little skeptical on what they are calling for size…but I do think at minimum we are going to get some fun surf from it. Look for this swell to start to arrive and peak on Dec 27th with surf running shoulder-head high at average WNW spots and overhead+ waves at the standouts. This one looks like it will send out some very long-period energy, 20-22 second stuff, so it may be a bit funky as it arrives and refracts all over Socal, we will have to wait and see how it really develops.

Even further out into the long-range it looks like we will see another pulse of WNW swell around Dec 30th…and possibly another shot that arrives in the first couple days of January…these are way out on the charts, but like I usually say…it sure is nice to see them on the charts.

South Pacific
Most of the South Pacific is still pretty boring…mostly just the summer laziness that sets up down there while it is out of storm season…but there was one area of decent looking fetch that spun up straight South of Socal a few days ago. Check it out on the windsat data from MOST (the Marine Observing Systems Team…it almost sounds like a super hero group...actually when you think about it they control awesome satellites, have the ability to launch rockets, and can ask astronauts to give them a hand...they are a super hero group!).



Anyway this fetch hung around in a decent position for a couple of days and it looks like we are going to see some playful chest-shoulder high S swell (175-190) that arrives on the 25-26th. I am not sure how consistent it will be, since the storm wasn’t that intense and it was sort of moving at a weird angle (not directly towards us which would have been the best). Still it looks like some fun surf at the better s-facing spots…and maybe even some fun combo peaks as it mixes with the steady WNW-NW energy.

Next Long-range forecast will be posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009

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