No big waves for you!
This morning arch-conservative (in its political leanings not wave measurements) surf forecasting website Surfline delivered its Christmas calculation and it is very bah humbug if you are the sort that craves big waves and/or craves watching big waves.
Are you that sort? Are you like the World Surf League President-elect of Content, Media and WSL Studios who is in Fiji right now (I think) at #kalamakamp surfing the monster waves of his young life?
Well, Surfline says screw you and let us read from their report.
“It’s a really tough very long range/winter forecast in the North Pacific, in what has been a peculiar past five to six years. As mentioned above, weak to moderate El Nino’s are all over the place in terms of North Pacific surf (and West Coast precipitation). Add the anomalously warm water in the Gulf of Alaska and it doesn’t make me feel great about our surf on the West Coast this winter (especially Southern California).”
“If I had to give a prediction, I would say first and foremost, it’s very low confidence — Southern California will be below average for surf size, we’ll probably see warmer than average air temps, and more days than normal of light wind/clean conditions. Northern California may also see smaller than normal surf and below average number of XXL days…”
We are apparently in a weak El Nino and this of course means no big waves for you and it also means no big waves for John John Florence and Kelly Slater at the just-around-the-corner Billabong Pipeline Pro in Honor of Andy Irons.
Do you care?
Or are you wiping your brow while waxing up your 5’2 fish?
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If only they had a sinister agenda! I could respect that!! They’re shitty at their jobs, and few things tweak my nipples more than sucking at your given profession.
If that is actually true it deserves some investigation and some legal hot pokers shoved up their ass. We need a leak to confirm.
Advertising standards etc etc. Wonder if small print on site says “we may adjust forecasts to our advertisers’ whims and you can’t complain.”
SS and all that, you know.
Every direction I can 😀
Key word. Mush…
I’ve ruined many a surf in good waves by riding logs and fishes…
Oh, I’m not looking at Surfline’s forecasts. Lookin’ at weather models of various kinds.
Yah — summer was good this year. Makin’ it harder to get through the half-assed fall 😉
Surfline forecasting small waves and an El Nino, should be met with a fair bit of optimism! They cant seem to produce an accurate forecast to save their lives!! Those HD cams are the only true surf report given on surfline! Their forecasts are no more accurate than my arthritic knee.
Why does a ‘weak El Niño’ mean smaller than average waves? My humorously poor knowledge of meteorology thought an El Niño winter meant, typically, better than average swell conditions. So shouldn’t even a weak El Niño be slightly better than years that altogether weren’t classed as El Niño?
Genuine question – not trying to act a smart arse.
Yah — that’s usual assumption. El Niño is good surfing. New shit has come to light. The linkage between El Niño ocean temperatures and California’s actual weather may be less direct than previously believed. And, quite honestly, it’s still not well-understood. At the same time, climate change may also be putting a monkey wrench into the whole thing, so that historic models and patterns just don’t really hold the way we expect at this point.
That said, it’s not totally out of the question to see a shit fall/early winter and then see the classic big-ass, stormy El Niño conditions show up in the late winter/early spring.
The models are just kind of all over the place, right now, honestly. Hard to say which way it’ll go, but November ain’t exactly rad.
Yeah if I were a gambling person Jen I would put a little wager on the side of some late winter storminess/etc
This doesn’t look very much at all like a “typical” El Niño event, the Indian Ocean pressure switch is in opposition to it, and the big surf El Niños have always occurred when both those oceanic/atmospheric systems have been aligned. Here on the Aus east coast we are experiencing our most “normal” spring in years — not usually a feature of El Niño years. Inland droughts are slowly being broken down by periodic rainfall coming down the monsoon line from Asia, that rarely happens during El Niño.
It’s silly predicting far ahead but fwiw I would think: Dull CA winter with late Pineapple Express action in late Feb/March; OK winter in Hawaii but not much west swell till Jan or later; not many cyclones off either Aust coast; slow start to the Indo season in 2019.
not worth booking a trip to the ments in may then? seems like we haven’t had an east swell in sydney all year…
well
1. May’s always the best month for equatorial Indo, so if it’s not good then, you’re buggered anyway
2. East swell, get ready. Talk again in a week.
I’ll take it, sure. 🙂
Nice to hear y’all are getting some drought relief. Send some on over here when you have a minute?
Beyond cyclone’s whats your prognosis for East coast Aus this summer? Is the impending easterly trade swell a harbinger of a fun (but not epic) summer?
“Fun but not epic”, I think a great description
European winter could be something else. Also Canaries/Morocco. Fuck! I wanna surf that Safi stretch! Maybe I will.
The Canaries have some epic set ups. And some seriously grumpy locals. I’ve heard rumors of some islands further south than the canaries that could be pumping in the swell that’s about to carpet bomb the North Atlantic.
where did they find the ball sack doing the post heat cringe-a-views. somehow the wsl has has managed to make Kaipo’s post heat interviews seem remotely listenable.
I like Kaipo . He can surf and is knowledgeable about all competitors from all around the world while still staying Hawaiian unlike Cote who is very knowledgeable about skate boarding ?
is that why cote is stubbornly contradicting his co-comentater with the use of “540 air” while ross calls it a 360. its making the both of sound like twats.
WSL latest drinking game .
Skull every time Cote says Bolts when someone lands an air cleanly
Let them learn that slowly through tedious lobotomizing skunking experiences ?
Ha ha yeah — exaggeratin’ natch. But man, the forecasts look shit rn.
I think I’d prefer rosy with a moustache over kaipo with glasses ?
Right? Booooo
Sigh. I have myself currently set up to attend the Pipe finals should it be at least B+ surf and an interesting draw. I guess my wait and see really will be wait and see.
Lefts ?
I much prefer proper Pipeline over Backdoor BUT a good forecast, right or left, is still a good forecast, right?
The way I see it if Kanoa is not a favorite then it is proper Pipe or Backdoor ?
I think we both know the answer to that question, right?
can someone please elaborate on “arch-conservative (in its political leanings”?
Former Prime Minister of Australia , Sir Robert Menzies ,who was heard to utter when the queen visited Australia :
I did but see her passing by and yet I love her till I die.
intriguing. and he’s forecasting now?
got to be better at it than harold holt…
Harold holt would have received waterman of the year if he was still around. fun fact. it was Harold that got Menzies interested in ocean currents and forecasting.
Didn’t he have something to do with lightning Bolt ?
ha, the lightning holt. maybe that’s what happened to him.
Yes, it is a little known fact that Sir Robert Menzies designed the LOLA interface and spent years in his custom Boston Whaler scanning the bottom contours off places like Mavericks and Teahupoo, in between selling iron to the Japanese during WW2 and then freezing Australia into socio-economic stasis for 20 years.
Only if there are waves in Protestant Heaven ?
To stay in Hawaii , mahalo . Just tuned into Hawaiian Pro and Facebook and WSL gave me the choice of Brazil , USA and incredibly Rest of the world ( English ) . Sadly enough both ROTW English and USA feeds have Cote and Williams babbling on in American ? Has the WSL found its absurd sense of humor ? Or has the tropical sun burnt a hole in their bum and melted their brains to butter ?
Does this mean JJF has jettisoned the coach who is statistically the best new coach to have the year after you’ve won your first world title?
Chas, when do we get the angry Chas article about Morgan shooting with Olebar Brown in the Caribbean recently? Feels squarely in your wheelhouse.