Saturday, January 28, 2017

Saturday 1 28 17 morning call

Another super busy day for me yesterday, but I managed to squeeze a dawn patrol session at Hookipa in it. What can I say, after 2 days of surfing perfect Honolua, that felt like a different sport. And that's not a typo.

Decent looking wave instead in this photo taken at The Point later in the day by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore

No significant southerly readings at the local south facing buoys, check the webcams to see if there's anything.

North shore
NW101
8.8ft @ 15s from 315° (NW)

Hanalei
4.7ft @ 17s from 305° (WNW)

Waimea
3.5ft @ 17s from 319° (NW)
2.3ft @ 13s from 321° (NW)

Pauwela
3.9ft @ 9s from 52° (ENE)
3.1ft @ 16s from 318° (NW)
2.7ft @ 12s from 322° (NW)
 
New solid NW swell on the rise, you can see it coming down the island chain in the buoy readings.
Below is the graph of the four buoys reported above, Z pattern starting from NW101 on the top left. I put a red arrow to indicate the graph of the new swell (dark blue everywhere other than Pauwela where is light blue). Notice how much slower the increment of the local buoys is compared to the NW101.

The numbers are also quite a bit smaller than predicted by the WW3 model (5f 14s at 4am) and Surfline (4.3f 15s at 2am), so this is another case of a late arrival. Not a good period for the models, evidently all those overlapping fetches that we've been seeing for the last week at least, have outcomes that are hard to predict.

I wouldn't be worried about the size though, since sooner or later in the day (probably in the late morning/early afternoon) the swell will ramp up quite a bit. What you should be worried about is the wind instead (see wind maps below).


 
Current wind map shows:
1) pretty strong distant NW fetch just off northern Japan
2) pretty strong much closer NW fetch. As indicated by the black arrow, this fetch will move east and put us in its northerly winds flow. That'll make conditions on the north shore ugly and stormy very soon and for a few days. But there's plenty sweet after the medicine. The first third of February should see light to moderate kona's and plenty NW waves. First Hookipa 10 of the season possibly coming up.
3) easterly fetch associated with a tropical disturbance. Related swell peaking at 7f 12s from 95 mid day Sunday and lasting about 48 hours at those levels
4) tiny fetch straight south of us which will not evolve in anything substantial


MC2km map at 7am shows clean surfing conditions on the whole north shore.


MC2km map at 1pm shows light trades still from a traditional direction.



But MC2km map at 6pm already shows the more northerly direction approaching from the west.


PS. Amazing Mavericks shots in this feature on Surfline.

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