Wednesday, January 07, 2015

1 7 15 morning call

4am main swell buoy readings:

NW
11.5ft @ 16s from 323° (NW)
8ft @ 13s from 351° (N)
2.8ft @ 10s from 345° (NNW)

Waimea
9.4ft @ 13s from 338° (NNW)           
5.4ft @ 10s from 349° (NNW)
2.3ft @ 3s from 12° (NNE)

Pauwela (indicative of what's in the water on Maui's north shore)
8.4ft @ 11s from 346° (NNW)
5.5ft @ 10s from 346° (NNW)
3.1ft @ 18s from 328° (NW)
1.3ft @ 4s from 3° (N)

West lanai Maui north shore (indicative of what's in the water on Maui's south shore)
2.3ft @ 14s from 277° (W)
1.7ft @ 5s from 302° (WNW) 
 
1.5ft @ 9s from 305° (WNW)


No sessions to report today, since I made another good call and rested (north shore was shit all day). Last week I did the same and the day after I was on fire... let's see what will happen today.
I'm gonna post a picture a glowing blog author in a post edit elaboration of the photographer Jason Hall as a good omen for the upcoming day sessions.


Well today we got a big swell on the rise! Actually two, the buoys seem to say.

1) the NW one is being read like this: 11.5f 16s at the NW one, no readings at Waimea, and 3.1f 18s at the Pauwela one. There's 18s readings at Waimea earlier than 4am, the lack of readings at 4am it's just a glich due to how big the N swell is...

2) the more northerly one reads 8f 13s at the NW buoy, 9.4f 13s at Waimea and 8.4f 11s at the Pauwela.

Add a couple of more readings of slightly different periods for each buoy and you will understand that there is a hell lot of energy in the Maui water already and more on our way.

With such a mix of high energy swells, the only way to find clean ridable waves is to search for places that because of their exposure filter some of that energy. Once again, I encourage to get a Maui map or go on google earth and find those spots... there's definitely some on the north shore.
But the easiest call for today is the west side. I have a surf lesson over there (I teach surfing and SUP surfing), so I guess I'll stay!

Let's not forget about the wind which, as usual, is pretty much as important as the waves.
First I'd like to start with the weather map, because it's what I call the "screaming clown face". The scream is not too loud (the high pressure that makes the mouth is not too big) and that's a great thing.
It means that after a brief couple of days of trade winds, the mouth will keep moving east and give way to a beautiful long period (at least 7 days, I'd say) of no trades and big waves.
You can also see a third eye coming up just north of Japan and it's easy to guess that we're gonna see another screaming clown face in a few days.
All this means is: the winter is full on and the north Pacific is and will continue delivering goods.


Below is an image that I call Big Blue. You can see the two fronts (shaped like two commas) associated with the two lows making the eyes of the clown.



One more graphical representation of exactly the same thing is what I call the wind map.
I circled the fetch related to the more westerly low that will keep stirring the waters and sending waves our way.


The wind, we were saying. MC @ 2km is dead (let's hope temporarily!), so here's Windguru. Much better than yesterday, the NAM model actually indicates a direction of 79 at 2pm. That's perfect trade direction.
If I look at the wind map above I tend to doubt that, but that's my opinion versus the one of very sophisticated mathematical models that simulate the behavior of the atmosphere running on extremely powerful computers, so...


Get your wind/kite-surf gear out you guys, you don't want to miss the next couple of days, because it's gonna be a while before you can use it again.

Have fun in the sun everyone!

   
PS. All the sources for this post are permanently linked in the links section on the right of this blog.

No comments: