Things Slow Down

Monday's solid mid-size WNW swell that delivered consistent head high waves, began to taper off Tuesday and ebbed away completely on Wednesday and Thursday. Today, Friday, there is a little wind swell in the water, but not enough to make town any kind of adrenaline rush...more like a yawn. The beach breaks are missing almost all semblances of sand bars, and there is a paucity of good waves there. Too bad, because this is usually the fall back position when town goes flat. If there are any sand bars working, the folks surfing them are keeping the secret (can't say as I blame 'em for that!).

Tides are higher in the morning too, moving away from the very low morning tides experienced earlier this week and last. This certainly isn't helping surf amplification any.

A pesky wind out of the south is competing with the northwesterlies for dominance. The south is winning as evidenced by the steady coming and going of smoke and haze from the Basin Complex fire in Big Sur. The NWS speculates that a 1600 feet deep marine layer is keeping the majority of the smoke from penetrating the fog and making it even smokier at the surface.

On the upside, water temps are starting to warm up nicely, both the farshore and nearshore buoy show temperatures in the high 50's. Sometimes they even touch the 60 degree mark.

While it's been majorly hot over the hill, coastal weather until today has been near perfect with light winds and fog clearing in the morning to bright or hazy sunshine in the afternoons. Things are cooling off everywhere though, with forecast temps dropping back into the low 70's and high 60's. This morning I did Qi Gong in the Hanni Garden, where a thickening marine layer has spawned heavy overcast with drizzle.

Surf forecast isn't looking too good. There's rumblings about a SPAC storm moving up and headed to Chile and Peru mainly, with some action for CenAm, Baja and SoCal. At this writing it looks like NorCal won't see anything from the south. And the NPAC went back to sleep, maybe this time until the alarm clock goes off in Sept/October. So it looks like we'll be groveling in whatever wind swells we'll be getting for a while.

With all this, it is still impossible to complain. We've had an incredible Spring and Summer so far, a little breather would be natural.

Can't surf? Paddle!