Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Wednesday's Waves: More Windswell for now but something is starting to line up way out back

Wednesday will be another surf day but it may be a touch sloppy at times.

Surfwise we will have mostly NW windswell (300+) and a tiny touch of leftover SW swell. Wave heights are expected to hold around waist-shoulder high+ at the exposed NW breaks. The protected areas will be much smaller, holding consistently in the knee-chest high range on the sets.

We will have a small storm moving through the area tonight that will bring some rain and scattered showers to both the north and central coasts. This front will be clearing the area by the morning and we should see weather start to dry out quickly afterward.

Winds should be light in the morning, (a lot depends on how fast the front moves out), so look for mostly light and variable onshore texture for spots from SF northward. Monterey Bay/Santa Cruz breaks will have light N-NW flow through the morning. All spots see an increase in NW flow by the afternoon.

Your best bet for surf will likely be the NW facing beach breaks...there may be a little bump to it with the onshore winds...but it should be manageable. The Santa Cruz spots will be quite a bit smaller...mostly weak longboard surf, but if you head out with that in mind you will probably have some fun there too.

Long-range it looks like the North Pacific is going to get one last gasp...the forecasts are showing a ok looking storm forming around the southern edge of the Gulf of Alaska. Here check out the wavewatchIII chart...it is showing the system in about 4 days or so.



If the storm lives up to forecasts we could see an overhead+ WNW swell, with some longer-period energy, arriving around the 28th or so. Anyway thought I would throw it out there for you to check out...make sure to check back I will have some better info as we get closer.

4 comments:

srfnff said...

Adam I've got a question for ya. Can you explain the disparity between the NDBC buoy data and the CDIP. Recently Buoy 42 was showing consistent hourly readings for a southerly swell, in the two to three foot range at 15 seconds. The CDIP data showed the south at 1.6 feet at 14 seconds.

Since the CDIP gets it's data from Buoy 42, why the big difference?

Thanks!

Unknown said...

It is a little hard to tell without actually seeing the live data.

Those CDIP models are still "experimental" to a certain degree. I don't think they have a lot of money to really build them out in a way that the public could use them.

Here is a link that explains a lot of what is going on behind the CDIP modeling pages...

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/?nav=documents&sub=faq&xitem=nowcast&xdoc=rec-nowcast

srfnff said...

Cool...thanks Adam...I'll check it out.

srfnff said...

Hey Adam,

Thanks for the tip. This page explains a lot about the CDIP program and how to interpret the data.

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/?nav=documents&sub=faq

BTW, good luck on getting your own heat at the Lowers contest...you've probably got about the same chances I have of surfing one on my SUP...ha-ha.