THE Surf Report 8/5/11

Freezing water and tropical surf.

SURF:

Fun little week of surf- if you didn’t mind the frigid water temps. Yesterday we had a little bump from the SW that joined some NW windswell and we got some fun chest high+ peaks around town- with slightly bigger sets in the OC. Today we have more of the same size surf around town as the NW has picked up slightly, the SW has dropped slightly, and hurricane Eugene has started to fill in. Look for chest high surf today with shoulder high+ sets in the OC from building Eugene swell.

The NW holds tomorrow, S Eugene swell peaks in the morning, and there’s a little leftover SW swell. Look for the OC to be the best with the dominant Eugene swell. Sunday has mainly NW windswell with leftover S/SW swell for chest high sets most everywhere with a sneaker bigger set in the OC. And as you know by now, we had a lot of WNW wind the past 7 days and it dropped our water temps to the low 60’s. Fortunately the wind has switched SW the past couple days and it’s crept up slightly to 63. Look for it to rebound to high 60’s by early next week if the SW wind continues to gently blow. Should be a fun weekend of surf- especially if you hunt down that S Eugene swell Saturday morning in the OC- and don’t mind wearing a wetsuit. Tides the next few days are 2’ at sunrise, 1’ at 8am, up to 6’ at 3pm, and down to 2’ at sunset. Make sure to keep up to date on the swells and conditions at Twitter/North County Surf.

FORECAST:

After the S/SW/NW swells run their course this weekend, the NW winds continue to blow off central CA and our outer waters to push more waist high windswell most of the week. The southern hemisphere hasn’t been too active but just enough to push another chest high swell mid week to us (probably Tuesday evening to Thursday morning). Nothing too exciting next week but it won’t be flat. Can’t complain. I would though like to see 1 bombing southern hemisphere swell though before summer’s over…

WEATHER:

The weather doesn’t know what the heck it’s doing. Way better than last summer but these last couple of weeks the models have been all over the place. Some days were supposed to be hot and sunny and we got low clouds hugging the coast most of the day. Other days were supposed to be cool and we got sunny nice weather. Basically it’s been somewhere in-between and that’s what we supposedly have on the radar for the weekend- low clouds and fog in the mornings burning off to hazy afternoon sunshine in the mid-70’s. High pressure should build slightly next week for slightly warmer temps mid-week with a little less clouds in the morning- not much of a real difference- just good comfortable summer weather.

BEST BET:

Looks like tonight or  Saturday morning may be the call as swell from Eugene will be peaking. Combined with that little NW windswell, the beachbreaks may have some fun shoulder high peaks. I’ll take it!

NEWS OF THE WEEK:

Hurricane Eugene was (and still is) and interesting storm. Models a couple days ago originally had it peaking around 120mph but it grew briefly into a strong category 4 storm with top winds of 140mph. It was also supposed to weaken a day earlier but held strong. All of this was great as the basic ingredients for a good swell generating storm are:

-Size of the storm

-Wind speed
-How long the wind blows
-Direction the wind blows

As Eugene weakens today into a tropical storm and we get some shoulder high sets from him (and head high in the OC), how come the surf he generated wasn’t bigger since the winds topped out at 140mph? Let’s look at the pros and cons of the storm:

PROS: Strong winds/category 4 storm. Long lasting. Not much wind shear from opposing fronts.

CONS: Moved sideways (kind of in a westerly direction) and not ideally towards us in a northerly direction. Moved fast- about 12 knots for a few days (i.e. he did a drive by). Relatively small sized storm.

So basically you had a couple good things and a couple bad things which resulted in an average swell. Ideally it would have been great if he headed due north towards us, built into a bigger storm over warmer waters, had a little stronger winds, and lasted a day or two longer. Which of course is a 100 Year Hurricane which hasn’t happened since the ’98 El Nino summer so that’s not happening again in our lifetime…

BEST OF THE BLOG:

Busy week on the blog (don’t tell my boss). Freestyle watch deals, Ocean Minded sandal steals, Dane/Kolohe/Julian and Kelly/Kerr/Tanner super heats at the US Open, mid-week surf checks, and cheap thrills for your date. More fun than a carnival. Get your kicks in the blog below!

DOUBLE PIC OF THE WEEK:

Of course you’ve heard of the ‘Surf City’ battle between Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz; both stake the claim to the name. Both have rich surf histories (two of the longest running surf contests in the world- the US Open and the Coldwater Classic), both have legends from their towns (Brett Simpson, Flea, David Nuuhiwa, Peter Mel, Corky Carroll, Nat Young, etc), both have strong surf industry ties (O’Neill, Quiksilver, Santa Cruz Surf Shop, HSSPeerthought and Surfing Waves.

Keep Surfing,

Michael W. Glenn

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