The light has always been one of the top 5 things I like about Maui, and yesterday it was unreal. I had to be in Lahaina in the early morning and driving back the West Maui Mountains were ridiculously beautiful. That's one good thing the trades bring: clearer air.
I absolutely love what the lack of wind does to the waves, but it's true that the air gets more polluted by the vog coming from the Big Island. I'm lucky that it doesn't affect me, but I know many people who suffer from it.
I went windsurfing just because I wanted to admire the Haleakala from the ocean and I wasn't disappointed at all. There were some fun size waves too, as the photo by Jimmie Hepp shows below, but it was way too windy/gusty for my taste.
Buoys 4am.
Surfline doesn't show the graphs this morning and that's a bummer, because I can't give you my estimate on when the new NW swell will hit Maui.
NW
8.3ft @ 15s from 309° (WNW)
5.6ft @ 13s from 311° (NW)
3.0ft @ 10s from 328° (NW)
Hanalei
4.2ft @ 9s from 5° (N)
4.1ft @ 15s from 322° (NW)
3.6ft @ 11s from 316° (NW)
Waimea
3.2ft @ 12s from 315° (NW)
2.7ft @ 10s from 343° (NNW)
1.6ft @ 16s from 321° (NW)
Pauwela
3.7ft @ 12s from 333° (NNW)
2.9ft @ 9s from 35° (NE)
2.4ft @ 6s from 50° (NE)
1.7ft @ 10s from 345° (NNW)
All I can do is to look at the 15-16s readings at the buoys along the path and guess that the swell will not be here at dawn, but it will be pretty substantial in the late afternoon.
BTW, the Volcom Pipe Pro is back on and it's gonna be pumping.
Wind map shows a compact and close fetch in its last day of wave generation for us. That fetch right now is building a reinforcement to today's swell that will hit on Wednesday (10f 14s).
After that, the waves are going to get increasingly smaller since the fetch behind is not going to intensify and we're gonna have a couple of days of break in the wave generation activity. It's ok, it's been non stop for the whole month of January 2016, which I believe we should remember for a while. Specially the guys that surfed Jaws.
It's also ok, because the wind will die again and as I said yesterday, small waves are great when they're clean. Completely different conditions in the weekend instead, with big rough medium period NW waves and horrible onshores.
Hopefully some of the energy I keep highlighting in the south Pacific will make it to us in the weekend, so that we'll have somewhere to go to escape the onshores. Otherwise, plan on doing chores in the weekend!
MC2km map at noon shows light trades that with the help of the sun might make for the third windsurfing day in a row. Very light and offshore at dawn though, so everybody should be happy.
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