Thursday, August 27, 2009

Surf for Friday – Adding a touch more size to the forecast

Friday will be another surf day...and I am going to revise my long-range forecast from this morning and add a little bit more size to tomorrow.

I am looking at the buoys this afternoon and it looks like the tropical swell from Ignacio is coming in a little bigger than I was thinking...not a ton...but enough that I think that our sizes from Thursday will continue into Friday, particularly at the S facing breaks.

So for tomorrow we can expect a mix of slowly fading, but still healthy S swell (180-190), continuing tropical S-SW swell (180-200) from Ignacio, and some very background NW windswell. Check out the current CDIP breakdown...

Santa Barbara


Los Angeles


Orange County


San Diego


Surfwise we can expect the average S-facing spots to be in the chest-shoulder high range. The better S facing spots will be more consistently in the shoulder-head high range on sets. Look for the standouts, mostly through Orange County, to be in the shoulder-overhead range on sets...pretty consistent through the morning.

Winds look good for the early morning...more of the light/variable to light offshore during the dawn patrol. Look for variable onshore texture starting to creep in around midmorning and increasing out of the WNW 10-14 knots by the afternoon.



I think that the S-facing points and reefs are going to be the call again tomorrow. The beach breaks will continue to be a bit walled up...but with the shorter swell periods on the mix of swells I think that they will be a bit more makeable if the sand is good, or they have something to break up the swell. I would try and get on it early again, mostly because of the winds. The tides are a bit funky tomorrow...we don’t see much of a low-tide...so you might want to keep the hunt focused at spots that can handle a little more water.

Here are the tides. Hope you guys score a few...

07:32AM LDT 3.3 H
10:17AM LDT 3.2 L
04:47PM LDT 4.7 H

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

i like that adam would rather under estimate than over estimate.

Anonymous said...

hell yes!

cheerupcheerio said...

I like those CDIP models!!!

Anonymous said...

should have added less size! went back to my spot that was firing on thursday only to see knee to waist high warbly mushy shitty ass waves......

Surfsister said...

My spot was still serving up some gems this morning. Right on, Adam!

james said...

adam, thanks for your great work! what are the urls for those swell maps? i looked around the cdip site and couldn't find them...
many thanks!

Anonymous said...

Ehh, good but the earlier swells were more fun.

james, keep looking.

Anonymous said...

bookmark these must have tools for the surfer.... useful...

JC

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/spc.png

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/socal_now.png

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/san_pedro.png

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=46223

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display.cgi?a=spac_height

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display.cgi?a=npac_height

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display.cgi?a=pac_per

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display.cgi?a=scal

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/fm_scb_xxx.png

Anonymous said...

WTF no weekend forecast... come on dude..... I was gonna send in for the killer whale drawing...but now I'm thinking twice.....

james said...

@Anon 7:51 - thank you!