"Much better conditions compared to previous days, but still not ideal."
Yesterday, the door officially opened on the World Surf League’s 2024 Championship Tour. The Lexus Pipe Pro, which kicks the season off, was not run, due poor conditions, but surf fans were thrilled by the appearance of surf great Kelly Slater looking at the models and declaring Wednesday would be an ideal day featuring triple-overhead bombs and ideal winds.
While the 11x champion knows much about much, including horticulture, cartography and Ayurvedic medicine, he likely knows most about waves. His forecast included tidbits about swell interval and what it meant plus why.
A glorious epistemology.
And yet not all parties were thrilled. Surfline is, you know, the World Surf League’s official forecasting partner and the Huntington Beach-based team was clearly peeved by having Slater do its job. Today, in an act of cattiness not seen since Vanderpump Rules, Surfline’s Jonathan Warren declared:
WEDNESDAY 31st: 8-12’+ faces AM, easing to 6-10’ faces PM. Decent conditions.
SWELL/SURF: Fading shorter/mid-period WNW swell. Biggest early, with double overhead+ sets still rolling in with fair+ consistency, occasionally bigger. Decreasing a notch or two into the afternoon. This swell will remain broken up with shifty peaks, especially as a new/secondary N-NNE swell builds in. Should see opportunity at both Pipe and Backdoor throughout the day. Much better conditions compared to previous days, but still not ideal.
WIND: Light+ offshore easterly wind early to mid-morning, becoming moderate from the ENE late morning into the afternoon.
Decent conditions? Not ideal?
Meow!
Warren went on to share a fairly bleak outlook with “low quality” surf malingering through the entire waiting period. Will last year’s wave curse plague the World Surf League once again?
Or will Kelly magic reign?
Thoughts?