Memorial Day Surf – Fun, soft, and slowly fading

Monday will be a surf day…nothing great overall but fun when the sets come through.

We are going to have a mix of fading S-SSW swell (180-200) and some background WNW/SW energy.



Most spots will be in the knee-waist high range with some inconsistent chest high sets at spots with a little more exposure to the S swell. The Standout S facing spots, mostly through Orange County and Northern San Diego, will have surf in the waist-chest high range fairly consistently…but with some shoulder high sets mixing in at times.

Winds look good, they will be very similar to what we have seen over the last few days. Overcast, grey skies and light/variable winds through the morning. Skies clear out and W winds build onshore around 10-12 knots by the afternoon.

Your best bet is just hunting around your local spots…it is a holiday and most of the top breaks are going to be weekend-crowded…so with the crowd and the soft/inconsistent swell mix we have out there it won’t be worth driving around a ton. Personally I am going to just stick close to home and hunt out a private little sandbar somewhere…and then fire up the bbq (and the coors light) in the afternoon as the sunshine and the wind picks up.



Have a good one…here are the tides!

04:54AM LDT -1.5 L
11:22AM LDT 3.6 H
03:55PM LDT 2.0 L
10:07PM LDT 6.5 H

Tuesday’s Surf – Don’t drink the brown water

So Tuesday is sort of actually looking a little surfable.

It won’t be super clean…and shape won’t be all that great…and the water quality is going to be unhealthy…but it does look like winds are going to lay down tonight and there should be plenty of swell leftover.

We are going to have a mix of W-NW wind/storm/short-period energy (270-300) and some longer-period WNW swell (290+) on Tuesday. Most W facing spots will be in the chest-shoulder high range tomorrow morning while the standout spots see some head high and potentially bigger sets through the morning (but a lot is going to depend on how much windswell holds overnight).

Right now it looks like winds are going to back off. The storm is passing through and a nice solid lump of cold air is moving over socal. It looks like that temp drop is going to help to push off the trailing portion of this storm and set up light/variable to even light offshore winds for most areas tomorrow morning. NW winds will get back on the horse pretty quickly through midday but there should at least be a window of better winds through the morning.

I would stick to the standout winter spots, like those in SD or Ventura, if you are looking for big waves tomorrow. The WNW’er is going to be driving a lot of the excess size but it is coming in from a bit of a steeper angle which means not every spots is going to be exposed. Stick with the top winter breaks and you should see plenty of size. Other lesser exposed breaks will be more windswelly, and tide/wind sensitive…but should still be playful despite the smaller sizes. As usual with as much rain as we had the water is going to be poo-tacular so if you get the bird-flu easy or have kids at home you might want to skip the turd lineup for a couple of days.

Here are the tides…I should be back on a more normal update schedule by tomorrow afternoon. Oh and we have just a single low and high tomorrow. Plan on the tide being high through the evening.

02:42AM LST 4.2 H
11:24AM LST 0.7 L