We will actually have a mix of new swell hitting on Wednesday but coastal winds are going to be pretty unstable (aka…bad) thanks to a passing cold front. In the water we are going to have a mix of early weak leftovers, new S-SW swell (190-210), and building WNW-NW energy (285-300) in the form of medium period swell along with increasing local windswell.
Wave heights are going hold in the waist-chest high range for many of the avereage exposed spots. Standout S-SW facing breaks, good NW windswell spots, and the top combo spots, will be in the chest-shoulder high range…and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some bigger sets mixing in on the lower tides.
Unfortunately shape doesn’t look great…onshore winds are expected to continue blowing overnight and will likely set up a funky eddy in the morning. At this point it looks like onshore W winds around 5-10 knots blowing through most of Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties. Orange County and San Diego will be more SW’erly…and a touch lighter…more 5-8 knots through the early mornign. Onshore flow is expected to increase out of the W around 12-18 knots by the afternoon. I am posting the early morning COAMPS model below…but I think that it is being a bit optimistic on the slight side/offshore flow that it is showing along the coast…chances are that even if winds switch around for an hour+ in the mornign it won’t be enough to groom out the bump set up by tonights winds.
I don’t think that it will be worth investing much time in the surf tomorrow…mostly because of the wind. I definitely wouldn’t plan on driving very far to check it. I would however give it a quick look (if you live close) or a quick cam-check (if you don’t live close)…just to see how the winds unroll tonight…we might see some small pockets of surfyness at the more protected spots.
Here are the tides…
01:51AM LDT 0.5 L
08:05AM LDT 4.5 H
01:53PM LDT 1.7 L
07:39PM LDT 5.0 H
