Saturday, December 13, 2014

12 13 14 morning call

5am main swell buoy readings:
   
NW
8.7ft @ 16s from 302° (WNW)           
6.7ft @ 7s from 2° (N)

Waimea
3.8ft @ 20s from 308° (WNW)
3.8ft @ 12s from 322° (NW)
2.6ft @ 9s from 338° (NNW)
1.7ft @ 5s from 25° (NNE)

Maui north shore (indicative of what's in the water on Maui's north shore)
4.2ft @ 9s from 31° (NE)
4.5ft @ 13s from 328° (NW)
1.6ft @ 20s from 315° (NW)
0.7ft @ 4s from 73° (ENE)

West lanai Maui north shore (indicative of what's in the water on Maui's south shore)
    1.8ft @ 13s from 268° (W)
1.7ft @ 9s from 202° (SSW)
1ft @ 4s from 302° (WNW)
 
0.5ft @ 20s from 291° (WNW)

Brand new swell on tap today, but with a lot of energy still in the water from all kind of directions as you can see from the maui buoy readings. That means the waves will interact with each other, have ribs and multiple peaks on their face and be overall not that clean. In other words, what we normally get at Hookipa.

In the past posts I pointed out how this new swell's storm started from a relatively westerly position.
For your convenience, instead of scrolling down to the 12 10 call, here's again the wind map of that day. The highlighted one is the fetch that generated the start of this swell.



Now let's have a look at the directions at the buoys: 302 at the NW, 308 at the Waimea and 328 at the Maui one.
The reason they change so much is because the swell gets refracted around the islands.
You are never going to see a swell that comes from 302 at the Maui buoy, because there's only islands in that direction! But fortunately the waves bend and get to our north shore anyway.
The longer the period and bigger the size, the better they bend. But they do lose a lot of energy and consistency when they do so.
So, expect this first part of the swell to be a lot smaller than what you'll be able to see if you watch the Pipe Masters today.
 
Below is the wind map of today instead.
The fetch I circled at the bottom is what usually the trade winds look like and the islands sit right in the middle of it. This will happen in the next few days as the high moves east, but today the islands are sitting well outside the trades fetch and I believe it's not going to be a good day for wind sports, despite what windguru and even maui county @ km say. I might be wrong, but that's what I think.
But the damn high will move to a more favorable position and it will take like a week to do so. That means trade winds for a week. That means a week of chop infested waves. But someone will be happy. We're all different, that's a great thing.

Allright kids, I'm late this morning, let's see if I can sneak a quick sesh before work.
Have fun in the sun everyone!

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