Well that was fun while it lasted. Good SW late last week blended with fun NW windswell this past weekend (along with nice weather) and most everywhere had rippable waves.
Today unfortunately the SW has continued to drop and all we have are some windy chest high sets with a touch of waist high NW windswell.
At least the wind is blowing from the SW finally. 2 weeks of NW wind has knocked our water temps down from 75 to 67. Still nice once the sun comes out but I'm not a big fan of putting on any type of wetsuit in the middle of August. Tides the next few days will be about 3' at sunrise, up to 4' at 8am, down to 2' after lunch, and up to 5.5' at sunset.
So what's the latest with our weather? High pressure this past weekend that gave us nice weather (along with NW winds that cooled our water temps) has been replaced by an early season low pressure system filling in along southern California. As it does tomorrow, it will draw in tropical moisture which will give most areas a slight shot at thunderstorms. As the low departs east late Thursday, high pressure fills in once again and we have nice weather for the weekend and early next week.
Ok, enough of the pleasantries, let's get down to business. We had a storm last week off New Zealand which sent us some chest high SW swell. We should see it arrive later on Friday. It was blocked by Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and Tahiti so expect some long intervals between sets.
But I don't care about that. What I care about is Tropical Storm Lowell. Out of the 12 named storms we've had this season, only Lowell has been directly aimed at us. Lowell is pretty feeble- winds are only forecasted to hit 65mph- but if you put it in perspective- we get chest high NW windswell here in SD County whenever the winds off Point Conception blow around 25 mph. So I'm expecting Lowell to give us head high surf towards Friday morning into Saturday. And the cool thing is that it will be short interval swell from the S. Something we hardly ever see here. Going to be some weird mysto spots going off this weekend.
But I don't care about that. On Lowell's heels is a storm forecasted to take shape by the name of Marie. If she gets her act together, we'll have a hurricane by this weekend, headed north to our swell window. Not to jinx it, but I'm hoping for overhead hurricane surf by the middle of next week- and maybe some significant summer rain if the clouds from Marie head our way too. Jinx!
And if you care what the southern hemisphere models have in store, there's just a little group of clouds on the charts for next week that may give us some small chest high SW towards the 1st of September. But until then, all eyes are on the tropics...
