Southern California Long-range Surf Forecast – 8/03/2009

Forecast Overview
We will see fading SW swell for the next few days...we won’t go totally flat but expect fairly small surf by the middle of the week. New S-SSW swell fills in on Friday and peaks Saturday.

Short Range (next 3 days)

Tuesday
SW swell (200-220) fades while NW windswell holds in the background. We can still expect surf to hold around waist high at the average spots while the standouts see some inconsistent chest high sets. The tides continue to hamper shape through midday on...so you might want to stick to the dawn-patrol sessions for the better-looking waves as well as a touch more consistency. Winds/Weather: Starting off light in the morning but still with enough onshore/eddy flow to set up texture at the open areas, cleaner at spots with some sort of protection from the wind. WNW winds 10-15 knots build in through the afternoon.

Wednesday
Midweek will be on the small side...we see leftover SW energy mixing with steady, but steeply angled, NW windswell. The average spots will see small gutless surf in the knee-high+ range. Standouts will be more into the waist-high range with inconsistent chest high sets on the low tides. Continue to look for the biggest (using the term loosely) sizes at the top SW facing breaks and good combo spots. Best shape will be in the morning as we come off the low tide. Winds/Weather: Slightly more eddyish with W-SW winds around 5-knots for the early morning building to 8-10 knots by midmorning. WNW winds build into the 10-15 knot for the afternoon.

Thursday
Thursday will look a lot like Wednesday, but with less SW swell, the same amount of windswell, and a tiny touch of SSE tropical energy. The average spots continue to see knee high mushburgers while the standout SW facing/combo breaks see some waist-high+ mushburgers. Winds/Weather: Stupid eddy circulation continues with W-SW winds around 5-knots for the early morning building to 8-10 knots by midmorning. WNW winds build into the 10-15 knot for the afternoon.

Long-Range

North Pacific
This is still a pretty boring stretch of water...there is a weird subtropical low that may push some moisture over the California coast. Doesn’t mean much for swell but it could spread a few muggy/warm showers into our weather. Likely it will just increase humidity to the “miserable” setting. Thanks for nothing...stupid weather.

South Pacific
A playful, but sort of finicky SW swell peaked on Monday and will be slowly fading out over the next couple of days. later this week another chest-shoulder high S-SSW swell (180-200) moves into our area. The new S-SSW’er pushes in on Friday (Aug 7th) and holds through Saturday (Aug 8th) before fading slowly.



Further Out it looks like a small mix of S and SW swells will help to reinforce the S-SSW swell from Friday and Saturday...these won’t add any more size but they will keep the chest high waves from fading too fast. Look for smaller but rideable waves continuing into the 11-12th before it finally fades out. Extreme long-range What looked good last week has sort of fallen apart on the charts, so at this point there are no significant swells on the horizon. It isn’t totally hopeless though...there is still a bit of interesting storm action showing waaaaaaay out on the charts, nothing to get excited about by any stretch of the imagination, but at least the forecast models aren’t showing a flatlined SPAC.

Northeast Pacific Tropics
We have new activity brewing up in the NE Pacific...TD-07e formed today and the forecast models have it strengthening further overnight, likely becoming Tropical Storm Enrique.





At this point TD-07e isn’t all that large...and the different hurricane models are not showing it getting a whole lot bigger. The Effective fetch may end up being about 80-90 miles across, and that is just the 34-knot Tropical Storm minimum, the faster winds will be much smaller, less that 30-50 miles long and pretty narrow. Needless to say none of those things are good for swell production. I do expect some energy showing from this system (around late Wednesday/Thursday) but not with very much size based on this forecast run.