Tropical Alert – First Hurricane of the Season (and she is a potential wave-maker for Socal)

Just wanted to drop another heads up on our tropical activity…as of this afternoon the East Pacific Tropics has its first hurricane of the 2010 season.



Tropical Storm Celia has intensified into Hurricane Celia…and if that wasn’t enough…her forecasted track, and forecasted maximum wind speeds have both become a lot better looking.



The latest NHC forecast is calling for Hurricane Celia to intensify into a Major Hurricane (Major Hurricane means that sustained winds will be greater than 93-knots) by Tuesday…with forecasted winds hitting 100-knots and gusts reaching 120-knots. That slow WNW curving track is going to push Celia into the Socal swell window by Thursday (June 24). The slight tack toward Socal, as well as the slow movement speed (around 6-8 knots)…will let this storm spend a lot of time over the same stretch of water, the more time it can spend in the same place, or moving toward us, the more energy that it can load up into the swell.

You can see on the forecast map that the storm is a ways south, and still a ways from the Socal swell window…it will take about 3-4 days for the storm to push into a position where it can send us swell (though it will be sending Baja Sur swell all of this week). Once the storm is in our window it still takes a couple of days for the energy to reach us…so Socal potentially could see some new SE swell as early as June 26th…but will probably see the swell arrive mostly on the 27th and then hang on for a couple of days afterwards.

It is still a bit early for surf heights from this one…but if it can live up to this forecast I would expect some overhead sizes at the standout SE facing spots as this swell peaks. I am sure I will be updating this as Celia continues to develop.

Tropical Alert – two tropical storms, one in our window, and the other heading our way

Over the last week or so the tropics have gone from 0-60…and it looks like it is just going to pour on the activity over the next few days.



We have two storms moving through the East Pacific Tropics this morning. The first system is Tropical Storm Blas…who formed up on June 17th. The first few forecast runs had TS Blas being a relatively weak system who would have dissipated back to a remnant low before hitting the Socal swell window…fortunately tropical systems like nothing better than to screw with the computer models…and so instead of weakening, Blas has intensified, shifted his track (to a better direction) and is now moving into our swell window. Blas will start to weaken again as he reaches cooler water but it looks like he will manage to send us some swell before he starts to fall apart.



At this point it looks like we will see a little SE swell from Blas…nothing outstanding…but there should be some rideable surf pushing into those little SE facing nooks and crannies that can only pick up the SE swell. We will see this new tropical energy moving in late on June 22nd…but with the peak of the swell hitting mostly on the 23rd. Wave heights won’t be that impressive, most spots will be the knee high range…but a few of the top SE facing spots, mostly through Orange County and a few other SE facing beaches will get a little punchier and a little bigger, tapping out in the chest high range…with a couple of bigger sets now and then.



The second system, TS Celia, is cranking along in the coastal waters just off of Central America. She is already a pretty strong Tropical Storm and she is intensifying rapidly, with winds hitting 55-65 knots at times in the key areas of the fetch . The hurricane model has her reaching hurricane strength early on Sunday and then holding that way for a couple of days. Unfortunately the storm is still a ways from the Southern California swell window…(well at least right now)…but the latest forecast are showing this storm moving further west, eventually reaching our swell window, in about 4 days…if this happens we would likely see another, possibly stronger, shot of tropical SE-SSE filling in around the 26-27th.

There is still a couple of days of swell formation so make sure to check back for the latest swell details as we get closer. Have a great father’s day!