Surf for Friday – New WNW-NW swell with a little wind-bump on the side

Friday looks pretty surfable…and with the weather warming back up, it being a Friday, and there being some swell to ride…I think we should just go ahead and call it a surf day.

We will have a mix of fading SW swell (195-215), a new building WNW-NW swell (280-300), and some increasing local windswell. The WNW’er will already be showing up around Ventura (and probably the South Bay) by the morning but it will have just started to arrive in OC and San Diego…so don’t expect a ton of new energy from it at first unless you are a little further north. It will fill in more through the day and as the local windswell jumps into the mix the WNW-NW facing spots should be pretty consistent by the afternoon.



Overall it looks like the average SW and WNW facing spots will continue to hold in the waist-chest high range…with some plus sets showing at the average combo spots. Standout NW facing breaks will be chest-shoulder high on most sets with some head high and overhead waves mixing in as the WNW energy gets more established. There will be another decent sized tide swing through the morning…so try and pick spots that can handle the extra water in the morning and then the negative low-tide around lunchtime.

Looks like winds will be fairly clean in the morning…there may be a little variable onshore winds here are there but it will be on the light side (hopefully below 5 knots). The winds switch onshore by the afternoon and push in out of the WNW-NW around 10-15+ knots.

Here are the graphical NWS regional models…the COAMPS needs to lay off the crack it has been smoking lately (they must be running it on a Vista machine).

Winds for Santa Barbara through Los Angeles



Winds for Orange County and San Diego



So it won’t be anything spectacular on Friday…the swell isn’t all that big for most spots…but there will still be enough combo in the water that almost everyone will be able to find something to ride. It will be one of those compromise days in terms of the tide/wind…do you surf early with the high tide and clean conditions? Or do you wait for the tide to drop and then get bumpy shape thanks to increasing onshore winds? Personally I am going to aim for somewhere in the middle and hope that I can find a sandbar somewhere that can take on the swampthing.

Make sure to check out the regional forecasts for the details for each county.

Regional/County Forecasts

Santa Barbara Surf Forecast
Ventura County Surf Forecast
Los Angeles County Surf Forecast
Orange County Surf Forecast
San Diego Surf Forecast

Here are the tides…

03/26/2010 Friday
12:55AM LDT 1.5 L
06:44AM LDT 5.2 H
01:42PM LDT -0.7 L
07:59PM LDT 4.4 H