Friday, July 24, 2009

Waves for the Weekend – Big SSW holds into Saturday, Fades Sunday

Both Saturday and Sunday are going to be surf days.

The SSW swell (180-200) that peaked on Friday will continue to hold solid size into Saturday before slowly fading throughout Sunday. Look for NW windswell to continue to get squashed by the bigger southern hemi energy...but slowly strengthen as we head into early next week. Check out the CDIP from this morning...we don’t often see this many colors on it.



And here is the sideways forecast for the weekend.



On Saturday the surf will continue to be on the large side. We can expect most S facing breaks to see waves in the shoulder-overhead range with a few sets going overhead+ at times. The standout S facing breaks, mostly through Orange County, parts of North LA, and Northern San Diego, will have consistent overhead surf with sets going several feet overhead.

Sunday the surf will drop back to more manageable sizes. The average S facing spots will see surf in the chest-head high range while the standout breaks see mostly shoulder-head high surf with inconsistent sets still hitting the overhead mark, particularly through the morning low tides.

Winds look ok through the weekend. Cleanest conditions will be on Saturday...with mostly light and variable winds through most of the morning and building WNW winds 10-12 knots for the afternoon. Sunday looks slightly choppy as light westerly flow moves in through midmorning and WNW winds 10-15 knots move in through the afternoon.

Saturday Morning


Sunday Morning


Best bets shapewise are going to continue to be the points and reefs. The beach breaks are just walled up with a couple of short sections, and unless you have a jetski towing you back into the lineup, probably not very fun. By Sunday (and Monday) I would start to keep an eye on the beach breaks though...the dropping SSW swell and building windswell might help to open them up a bit.

Here are the tides...stay safe this weekend!

Saturday
06:21AM LDT -0.4 L
12:42PM LDT 4.9 H
06:41PM LDT 1.3 L

Sunday
12:23AM LDT 4.9 H
06:58AM LDT 0.3 L
01:26PM LDT 5.0 H
07:51PM LDT 1.3 L

Also...the one good thing about this swell being so hyped is that there are plenty of photos.

The Daily Bread blog has some good ones of SUP’ers riding the wedge this morning. (Probably not the brightest call.)

http://dalybread.blogspot.com/2009/07/sups-surf-wedge.html

Here is the video off youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZdtCl2RLwE

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Adam, did you see the 40 wave set, with around 5 that broke at the end of the pier at Ruby's, around 4pm? Fig was screaming on the mic saying they were the largest waves of the swell. I couldn't believe it myself - it was bigger than that winter swell from a few winters ago. If they hadn't raised the height of the pier, it would have definitely broke over the deck.

We got back to HB around 3pm after surfing down south all morning. Snagged a good parking spot by the JG HQ (gotta have a car with "I swam the pier stickers"). My son caught some of the biggest waves he's ever had at a certain spot. Crazy, huh?

I can't wait to see the video of Malibu. I'm certain someone (Sarlo?) caught a wave past the pier.

My kid will be talking about this swell when he's my age.

Anonymous said...

30 waves sets today at Del Mar. Never thought I would see it happen, but it did. Actually it happened twice during my 4 hour session. Trying to get out through it was killer, but so worth it once the nice 5-7 footers came in. Good times!

Anonymous said...

surfed so hard today my arms are dead. dead, i say. ahhhh.....hurt so good!