Saturday, September 03, 2016

9 3 16 morning call

Double Hookipa surf session for me yesterday, both were kind of average but fun.
The photo shows a double rainbow at sunset and the fact that the waves weren't particularly impressive.
They're gonna be much bigger today, as the buoy readings below show.


The satellite image shows Lester fortunately well offshore at 4.30am.


We're not even getting much rain, as the radar shows at 5.15am.



4am buoy readings
Pauwela
12.4ft @ 13s from 95° (E)

Lanai
2.1ft @ 15s from 247° (WSW)
1.5ft @ 3s from 26° (NNE)
1.3ft @ 6s from 185° (S)
0.9ft @ 9s from 188° (S)

W. Hawaii
5.8ft @ 8s from 65° (ENE)           
3.8ft @ 14s from 233° (WSW)
1.4ft @ 6s from 70° (ENE
 
12f 13s is a pretty big number. Being from 95 degrees, only the Hana side will get the unblocked energy (so it should be pretty massive over there), while Hookipa will get whatever gets refracted around Pauwela point. Stay tuned for a beach report, but my guess is for overhead waves. Conditions are going to be very rough and dangerous, so be extra careful if you choose to surf this swell.

Fortunately, there might be an alternative.
In fact, let me draw your attention to those WSW reading at both the Lanai and West Hawaii buoys. That's the swell from Typhoon Lionrock. Pat Caldwell confirms the late arrival (compared to what predicted by the WW3 model, which is the main one on which most websites base their forecast). He also adds that this swell should peak today and continue through tomorrow. I saw TINY long period lines on the kihei webcams (I just added one in the Webcam links section of this blog) yesterday afternoon, you guys may want to double check yourself today.

Should be windy down there though, because of the northerly component of today's wind which at Hookipa is already from a 34 degrees direction. Which also means, forget about sailing starboard tack on the north shore today. It could still happen port tack if the wind will clock around and come from the WSW later in the day. These are the kind of things that are best predicted by the MC2km model. But as usual, it's not updated yet when I make this call.

7am update. Here's the finally updated MC2km at 2pm and it shows that the only place where you can sail today could eventually be Waiehu.

Wind maps shows:
- the Lester fetch
- the weak NW fetch. Pat Caldwells says "This should make for tiny to small breakers from short-period waves out of 310-320 degrees on Tuesday into Wednesday"
- a couple of fetches down south. The Tasmas sea one will do much better for us once it moves to the east of New Zealand. But in the meantime, here's another encouraging statement from Uncle Pat:
"A long-lived spell of southerly swell is due starting late Sunday (make that Monday, I say)
Back-to-back, austral winter-caliber low pressure systems tracking east along 60s to the S to SE of New Zealand within 8/28-31 should bring southerly exposures back into the summer active mode, after a below average August"
This should be no surprise for you blog readers, since I've been highlighting the fetches down south pretty much since a week.

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