Swell Drops; Normal Wx Pattern Reinstates

Typical June weather has returned with a vengeance. The foggy inversion layer is at 1500 feet, forecast to increase to 2000 by later today or tomorrow. Great for firefighting, not so great for hanging out at the beach.

It looks like the firefighters on the Martin Fire in Bonny Doon will have it pretty close to 100% contained by the end of today thanks to the change in weather and a very aggressive fire fight. As usual, Cal Fire and all the other fire agencies in the state rose to the occasion to fight the fire and protect peoples homes and properties. This is going to be a long and nasty fire season which I'm afraid will lead to exhaustion and an increase in the number of injuries for the people fighting these fires.

Since winds have turned onshore and there is no real ground swell in the water, we are at the mercy of nearshore, weak wind swell. The farshore buoy is posting readings on average of 5 feet at 10 seconds NW. This puts up surfable waves, but overall conditions are less than desirable as reflected in the NOAA Graphical forecast image at right.

Along with that pic is the current satellite pic showing the extensive marine layer all along the Cali coast. We'll be lucky to see a short period of sun today bracketed by fog and overcast from sun up to sunset and into the night.

Last evening was eerie as we had a mix of light fog and drift smoke from the Indians Fire in the Ventana Wilderness which put up a huge blanket of drift smoke covering an area of hundreds of square miles. The color cast by the filtered sun was a nicotine stain-like ochre masking an orange tennis ball sun.

Waves look very weak for the weekend, progged to pick up some into next week as a North-South gradient returns to create gustier winds and perhaps a bigger wind swell. There is some hope for a south swell that looks good for SoCal over the next few days. I am pessimistic though, that this very decent longer period swell will round the corner at Pt. Conception and show us some waves anytime soon. I think we're going to have to wait another week for our south swell waves. I'll be keeping my eye on the all the real data producers and not the internet surf hype websites that are more interested in trolling for eyeballs to increase their ad revenue by telling us it's going to be epic every day of the week, than issuing any really reliable and trustworthy reports. If you say it's going to be good every day you're bound to be right some of the time. If you're not going to keep track of it yourself the most reliable forecasters I've found so far are Adam Wright and Mark Sponsler. They are spot on most of the time.