Waves for the weekend – Plenty of swell, but plenty of wind too (stupid wind)

This weekend isn’t looking that great…

We will have two good sized swells this weekend…but we will also get the worst part of a cold-front/low-pressure that moves through Central California (and trails winds down over Southern California). The new S-SSW swell (180-210), that is already showing about 2.5 feet of deepwater swell at 18-22 seconds here on Friday afternoon, will peak with nearly 4- to 5-feet of swell midmorning on Saturday. At the same time WNW-NW windswell will move down the coast and strengthen as we move throughout the day.



Sizewise on Saturday we can expect average S facing spots and average NW facing breaks to be running shoulder-overhead on the sets with a few bigger waves mixing in at times. The standout S facing areas and the best combo breaks, mostly through Orange County, will see consistent head high to a couple of feet overhead on the average sets and then some bigger waves going a few feet overhead on the largest sets. A few of the best breaks will have waves going well-overhead pretty consistently along with a few bigger waves as well.

The wind conditions are where this weekend is going to suck…look for building onshore flow pretty much from the early morning on…you can see a few little tiny pockets showing around LA and parts of OC at about 5-6am on Saturday…these pretty much evaporate in building W winds a couple of hours after sunup. Once the wind gets going by lunchtime…expect 10-20 knot W-WNW flow for all areas and some stronger gusts up around Santa Barbara and Ventura



Sunday the S-SSW swell (180-210) will hold along with the larger bump in windswell…unfortunately the onshore winds look even worse.



Size will be pretty similar to Saturday…most spots running shoulder-head high with some overhead waves mixing in. The standout S facing breaks, the best NW facing spots, and better combo breaks will see head high surf with sets going a couple of feet to well-overhead at times. Again a few of the freaky S facing breaks will have some well-overhead+ surf mixing in during the morning.

Winds look very bad…W-WNW around 10-20 knots for the morning and then building 15-25 knots for the afternoon with gusts hitting near gale force (at 35-knots). Neither the COAMPS or the NWS models are calling for any clean spots in the morning…frankly both of the models make Sunday morning look like poop…and the afternoon is worse. I think it is time for spring to go away.



Since there is a lot of swell in the water I don’t think you can totally write-off this weekend…sure it will be hacked up and sloppy for almost everywhere, but there always seems to be a little obscure nugget of a spot that can hold rideable shape somehow. Plus there are a few waves, that stay semi-rideable (depending on your equipment), no matter what the wind is doing…I am not saying that they will be great or anything, just that you can still get out and ride a wave. I would give the cams, buoys, wind-obs a check in the morning, just to make sure that these winds didn’t do something funky overnight.

Here are the tides…I think we might need to offer up a human sacrifice to make the winds go away…I will get right on that.

05/22/2010 Saturday
05:08AM LDT 3.7 H
11:27AM LDT 0.6 L
06:03PM LDT 5.1 H

05/23/2010 Sunday
12:48AM LDT 0.7 L
06:27AM LDT 3.6 H
12:15PM LDT 0.9 L
06:41PM LDT 5.6 H