Slop for Monday – Looking stormy

Monday is not looking like a surf day for most spots.

Our WNW-NW swell (285-300) will be building on Monday but stormy conditions are forecast to move in early on Monday morning and keep things sloppy throughout the day.

The WNW energy is actually going to be a mix of all sorts of stuff…leftover energy from the weekend, some local short-period windswell, and some long-period energy from the first part of that larger storm system building in the North Pacific. The long-period stuff (and the leftovers) will be showing in the morning, particularly at spots up in the SB and Ventura areas, but the shorter-period storm/windswell will be building in through the day…check out the difference in the swell forecasts between the am and the pm. Oh and there is a little SW pulse out in the water too.





Surfwise we can expect the average exposed spots to be around waist-chest high…more consistent in areas that normally like winter energy and less consistent and smaller in the lesser exposed regions. Top NW facing breaks will be around chest-shoulder high with some head high sets on the lower tides. Looks like all spots will be bigger as the windswell fills in through the afternoon.

Really I am not sure why I am going into so much detail on this forecast…the weather looks like poop on Monday. We have a pretty chilly cold front moving down from the north that is going to carve right into a bunch of warm/moisture that is holding over Socal…no sh*t, I believe that the NWS is describing this air-mass as “juicy”…not sure I have ever heard that one before. Anyway the mix of the cold front and the “juicy” air-mass is supposed to be pretty nasty…something like 1-2 inches of rain along the coast and some areas potentially seeing nearly 4 inches of rain. Snow-levels are supposed to drop to about 2000 feet too which is crazy.

Ok so for the morning it looks like S-SE to S-SW winds blowing through most of Socal…more SE’erly up by Santa Barbara and more SW’erly down by San Diego. Winds will be around 10-15 knots for the morning and then building 15-25 knots, with 30-35 knot gusts by the afternoon. Gale warnings and in effect for the offshore areas.



Something to keep in mind…even though the forecast has all this nastiness line up for tomorrow it really depends on how fast the cold front moves in. If it stalls or shifts its track, the timing could change and we might see some a small window of conditions. As I usually do when we have swell in the water, I think that it will be worth at least a cam check in the morning...hopefully things will hold together just long enough that we can pick off a few.

Here are the tides…

12/07/2009 Monday
01:41AM LST 4.0 H
06:47AM LST 2.5 L
12:22PM LST 4.8 H
07:44PM LST 0.0 L

Waves for the weekend - Happy Halloween!

We are going to have some surf this weekend. The waves are already in the water but actual shape/conditions are going to depend a lot on the approaching cold front. Right now it looks like the storm is stalling out and won't be able to push as much wind/rain over SoCal as the earlier forecasts predicted...we may still get some weather Sunday and Monday but it looks a lot more rideable on Saturday.

Hopefully this storm will fizzle out completely before it gets to the SoCal coast and just let us have the surf without jacking up our winds and weather.



Oh by the way the Daylight Savings Time switch is this weekend...make sure to set your clocks (Saturday night at 2am!)

To make the forecast a little more clear I broke each day out into its own section.

Saturday's Surf - The new SW'er (190-210) will hold while WNW (280-300) energy begins to build. Most spots will push into the waist-chest high+ range. The standout SW facing spots and the good combo spots will have chest-head high sets through the morning and some potentially overhead sets by the afternoon.

Saturday's weather - Looks like we could get a surf window on Saturday...winds are expected to be light and variable through the morning and then stay on the light side (under 10-knots) through most of the afternoon. Hopefully it will be clean enough that we can finally get some halfway decent combo swell.

Sunday's Surf - The SW swell holds but a new pulse of W-WNW swell (270-300) starts to arrive. It will be showing pretty well in Santa Barbara and Ventura in the morning but won't really get going in LA, OC, and SD until late in the afternoon evening (it will peak in those areas overnight into Monday). Average spots will be in the chest-shoulder high+ range while the standout W facing breaks and the combo spots see overhead sets.

Sunday's Weather - Not as good as Saturday...W winds around 5-10 knots through the morning with some increasing clouds. W winds 10-20 knots by the afternoon with the potential for gusts topping out around 25 knots.


Saturday will likely be the best day...but not the biggest since the majority of the W-WNW swell arrives Sunday and Monday. Still there should be plenty of surf at the well exposed spots. San Diego will have the most size/consistency overall but there will be fun waves at most of the better combo spots throughout the other regions as well. I don't think that you will have to drive too far for surf, there will waves all over, but you may want to focus on spots that aren't super wind sensitive.

Sunday...well I am not ready to write off Sunday totally...but personally I am going to be keeping a "weather eye" on conditions around my house as well as the buoys and the cams...I am hoping that winds stay light through the morning, at least enough that we can get a few waves before the winds come up.

Here are the tides...

Saturday
12:14AM 3.4' High
04:13AM 2.7' Low
10:34AM 5.4' High
06:29PM 0.3' Low

Sunday
01:24AM 3.2' High
03:30AM 2.9' Low
10:07AM 5.1' High
06:24PM 0.6' Low

And finally have a great holiday tonight...Happy Halloween! Stay safe!