Waves for Wednesday – a few small ones

Wednesday will have a few rideable waves but there isn’t really enough swell to call it a surf day.

We will have a mix of SW swell (200-220), some leftover S-SSW swell (180-200), and some weak NW windswell.



Most spots will be around knee-knee high+...with a few bigger sets on the lower morning tide. The standout spots (and I use the term loosely) will have some waist high+ sets. The best shape will be as we move off the negative low tide in the morning. Look for a little bigger surf through Orange County and San Diego thanks to a little more exposure to the swell mix.

Winds look good...mostly light and variable to light offshore through the morning. NW winds around 10-12 knots will move in through the afternoon.

Like I said there will be a few rideable waves sneaking through in the morning but mostly it is going to be small and kind of gutless at the average spots. Your best bet is going to be at the better combo beach breaks, particularly spots that have some good sandbars. I think that a bigger board (or at least something that works well in small surf) will probably be the most fun.

Here are the tides...

06:36AM LDT -1.3 L
01:17PM LDT 3.6 H
05:46PM LDT 2.3 L
11:50PM LDT 5.9 H

Wednesday's Waves - Rideable but with more of the lame-o bump

Wednesday will be a surf day but once again conditions/shape will be on the marginal side for some areas.

In the water we will have a mix of new SW energy (210-220) and more local NW windswell. Wave heights will continue to hold in the waist-chest high range for most of the average exposed breaks. Standout combo spots, mostly in San Diego, will have some chest-shoulder high faces sneaking through on the morning tide push. Here is a shot of the Tuesday afternoon CDIP model...Wednesday will be very similar but with a little more SW energy filling in.



Morning winds are expected to continue the weak eddy that we have seen over the last couple of mornings. Look for mostly light/variable winds with some onshore NW texture for the northern areas (like Santa Barbara and Ventura) and W-SW texture for Orange County and San Diego. LA County will be marginally cleaner in the morning, well at least it will have better winds, the surf will only have slightly better shape than the other areas. Afternoon winds come onshore out of the W-NW around 10-15 knots (the usual). Check out the NWS/NOAA graphic forecast for Wednesday morning (8am). As you can see I am back to drawing ugly arrows in photoshop.




It will be rideable tomorrow but I don't think that it will be all that fun. The mix of swells is still a bit fugly...too much of the actual wave heights will be powered by the short-period windswell (4-6 second swell periods which really suck for surf). The SW'er will send in some occasionally decent sets to the exposed breaks but I think it is going to be inconsistent enough to make surfing the rest of the crap pretty frustrating. Your best bet will be to hit up a really shallow sandbar that can pull in the combo swell... I would try and get on it in the morning so the winds are lighter...if you wait too long and it will be pretty sloppy.