Surf for Tuesday – Small and sort of sloppy

Tuesday won’t be a surf day…building onshore winds and mostly small morning swell will be a good reason to stay in bed.

We are going to see a mix of mostly leftover WNW and SW energy through Tuesday morning…just background energy still hanging on from the weekend. We will have building NW windswell starting to increase wave heights throughout the day but the NW winds are coming right along with it.



Wave heights are going to be mostly knee high at the average spots through the morning. The standout NW facing breaks will be more in the waist-chest high range on inconsistent sets. The top NW-WNW facing spots will start to see an increase in short-period windswell by the afternoon that will push size more into the chest high+ range with a few shoulder high sets coming through before dark.

Winds look pretty lame tomorrow…strong onshore flow is expected for most of the morning in the Santa Barbara and Ventura areas. Some of the models are showing a slight eddy spin setting up shop around Long Beach…possibly helping to both lighten wind speeds and bend winds back around to the S-SW for San Diego, Orange County, and the South Bay. Check out the COAMPS forecast for the morning.



You can see the eddy spin pretty clearly defined…just south of Long Beach Harbor. I am not sure how realistic this forecast is…but if it can pull together this way we could see pretty manageable winds for the South Bay, North OC, and then more S-SW’erly flow through San Diego (which a couple spots can handle down that way).

So for tomorrow…don’t be in a hurry to get down to the beach…even if the winds are lighter than the current forecast says they will be, we still won’t have any significant swell…and in my experience there isn’t much of a difference between bumpy/flat and smooth/flat. Personally I am going to cross my fingers that we get a lot of windswell spun up on Tuesday so that it can power enough rideable energy into Wednesday when conditions start to clean up,

Here are the tides…

06:36AM LDT 4.1 H
12:20PM LDT 2.5 L
05:34PM LDT 4.0 H

Waves for the weekend – windswell you are our only hope

It is not going to be a surf weekend...lack o swell will be the name of the game.

There will be a few weak waves scattered around, and any water time is better than sweating, but overall it is going to be pretty small. We are going to have a mix of weak leftovers both from the NW and SW as well as some local WNW-NW windswell that will slowly increase through Saturday night into Sunday. Unfortunately, as with most local windswells, the local conditions aren’t going to be all that great since the winds setting up the new energy come in right behind and junk it up.

Here is a current CDIP shot of what we got going on this Friday.



And this is what will be slowly crawling in this weekend.



On Saturday we are going to see more small surf in the morning...mostly knee high and below for the average spots. Top NW facing breaks, and the good combo spots, will be around waist high on the sets. There will be a little more size in the afternoon as the winds push in more windswell but shape and quality of the size-increase will be pretty shaky.

Sunday we might have a slightly more surfable morning as the windswell holds from the night before and the onshore winds sort of back down around sunup. I am expecting more knee high surf at the average breaks, but the better NW windswell spots should be more consistently in the waist high range with a few waist to almost-chest-high waves mixing in on the low tides.

Winds don’t look that great...NW flow is expected to increase this weekend (it is where the windswell is coming from)...and while it might cool off our air temps a bit, it will also junk up conditions pretty early each day. Look for variable onshore winds in the morning, mostly around 2-5 knots...then building NW-W winds around 12-15+ knots for the afternoon (with stronger gusts in some of the more exposed areas).

Saturday Morning Winds


Sunday Morning Winds


Like I said...not much going on this weekend...and while I put the NW windswell in the forecast, the fact that I am even talking about it is bad sign for our surf for the next couple of days. Personally I will probably take a longboard down the beach, push my kids into a few weak dribblers and try and take advantage of the warm water while it lasts. I wouldn’t spend any sort of quality time looking at the surf, or burning a lot of $3-a-gallon gas to get to the beach unless you are just going to cool off (and don’t care about the flatness).

Here are the tides...fat lot of good they will do us.

Saturday
04:09AM LDT 0.4 L
10:12AM LDT 5.0 H
04:18PM LDT 1.1 L
10:11PM LDT 5.0 H

Sunday
04:30AM LDT 0.7 L
10:35AM LDT 5.1 H
04:55PM LDT 0.9 L
10:47PM LDT 4.6 H

Surf for Friday – Smaller and still bumpy

Friday won’t be a surf day.

Oh it won’t be totally flat....there might be a couple of semi-rideable waves at the top spots...but dropping SW swell and steady eddy conditions will hamper shape and consistency. We are going to have a mix of fading SW swell (200-220) and a bit of weak local WNW windswell.



Average spots will be in the knee high range with rare waist high sets. Standout SW facing spots, again in South Orange County and Northern San Diego, will have a few waist high+ waves on inconsistent sets.

The wind will be the same sort of eddy conditions that we saw on Thursday. Mostly variable onshore for the majority of our beaches, with more southerly to southwesterly flow as you move into Orange County and San Diego County areas. Current wind models are showing the eddy developing pretty low and further off to sea than normal...which could be good (if the winds spinning off the eddy are light when they hit the coast) or bad (as the winds come more out of a SW direction that offers little protection for most beaches). Check out the COAMPS for tomorrow morning...



I would take it slow tomorrow morning...maybe do a wind/surf-cam check in the morning before spending time/money/gas getting to the beach. If you have to surf, and don’t mind a little bumpy crumblers, I would stick to the top SW spots since they will have a little more push to the sets.

Here are the tides...

01:19AM LDT 0.4 L
08:13AM LDT 3.3 H
11:55AM LDT 2.9 L
06:17PM LDT 5.2 H