THE Surf Report 7/20/12

Summer's on. Come and get it!

SURF:
Lots of good stuff this past week- great weather, tropical clouds, water in the high 60's, and fun hurricane surf. The way summer is supposed to be. Today we only have background NW/SW for waist high sets in north county SD and chest high in the OC- and the early morning low tide is putting a drain on the swells.

We had a little activity in the southern hemisphere last week that pushed a small swell our way and we should get some new SW filling in tomorrow. Look for chest high waves in north county SD and head high in the OC by the afternoon. That holds through Monday morning. There's also a little NW wind blowing in the outer waters/Point Conception today that increases slightly by Sunday. Look for some knee-waist high NW windswell to help break up the SW lines slightly. Look for more peaks on this SW swell than what we had recently with the walled hurricane swells this past week.

Tides the next few days are almost -1' at sunrise, 4.5' at lunch, 1' late afternoon, and 4' at sunset. And the water temps have been fluctuating the last few days due to upwelling from the hurricane swells, but it looks like we're back to the high 60's. Wear some trunks for those afternoon sessions! Make sure to keep up to date on the waves and weather at Twitter/North County Surf.

FORECAST:

After a fun weekend of SW swell, the NW builds about another foot towards Tuesday for consistent waist high waves towards SD. The southern hemisphere unfortunately is still not that organized (been about 2 months now it seems like) and we just have some background SW for the middle of the week for maybe waist high waves in north county SD and chest high sets in the OC.

In regards to hurricanes, I use three different models to track storms in the tropics. 2 of the models show nothing in the coming days but 1 shows a blip on the radar. Since only 1 out of 3 shows something forming, I'm not holding my breath for any swell this week from the tropics- but it bears watching. If anything does form, we wouldn't get swell until at least next weekend.

WEATHER:

Fantastic weather around here if you haven't noticed. Nothing really changes in the foreseeable future. We have a little more low clouds/fog in the mornings forming this weekend but they'll burn off by mid-morning at the latest. Sunny beach weather is on tap with temps in the mid-70's again. There is some monsoonal 'tropical' moisture moving up from the desert SW this weekend and we may get a couple clouds overhead by Sunday/Monday for more humid conditions around here. Towards the middle of next week we get more extensive night and morning low clouds but they should burn off to sunny skies for great beach weather again. No complaints.

BEST BET:
Sunday should be the day- peaking SW swell, building small NW windswell to peak up the surf, trunks, and maybe some 'tropical' clouds floating overhead. We must be in the thick of summer...

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Awhile back I reported on THE Surf Report that the 3 main factors for a storm to build a swell is wind speed, the size of the storm (i.e. the distance the wind blows), and the duration the wind blows. But as in the case of the last 2 hurricanes that sent us surf (Hurricane Emilia and Hurricane Fabio) there is a secret 4th ingredient that determines if a storm will generate good surf for us. That 4th factor is the direction a storm is headed. In a nutshell, if a storm is headed your way, it is likely you'll get better surf. Sounds reasonable right? But why? Let's take Emilia and Fabio as an example:
-Emilia and Fabio were similar sized storms
-Emelia and Fabio lasted about the same amount of time
-Emelia had peak winds though of 140mph and Fabio had 105 mph winds- but Fabio had bigger surf...
-So the reason the larger storm Emilia had smaller surf was that Fabio was aimed at us
Emilia was headed in a WNW direction away from us while Fabio was headed in N direction towards us. Fabio was basically pushing energy towards us. If Emilia was a person standing a few feet in front of you and blowing a fan at your face, you'd feel less wind (energy) if they started to walk away from you. Now if Fabio was a person walking towards you with a fan, you'd feel a lot of wind (energy) once they got a few inches in front of you. Hence the reason 140mph Emilia only had head high surf in the OC and 105mph Fabio had overhead surf in the OC. Of course the reason it was generally small in north county SD from both storms was due to swell angle- but that's another story for another day!

BEST OF THE BLOG:

What would summer be without the ...Lost crew making a mess of Lowers? The Clip of the Day has got Julian, Medina, Kolohe, Simpo, and a host of other 'CT/'QS warriors riding Biolos' shapes earlier this spring and absolutely destroying the crowded line up. And Encinitas' version of Central Park is finally getting built with an expected completion date of late 2013- make sure to check out the details on the blog. And of course a mid-week Surf Check and an in depth THE Surf Report. All of that and more in the blog below!

PIC OF THE WEEK:

Morocco is many things. A mysterious Muslim nation, a getaway for European surfers, a hangout for Led Zeppelin, you name it. My favorite thing is the amount of random jetty structures they've built that have made hundreds of miles of useless beachbreak into world class waves. Have a few extra hours to kill? Check out the Moroccan coastline on Google Earth and see what I mean. Today's Pic of the Week is one of those random structures. Thank goodness the Moroccan population is more tuned in to soccer than surfing or this place would be as crowded as Cottons!

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn
Stout
The Next Glenn In Space
Petitioning to Have Any Surf Spot Named After Me