Friday 3 17 17 morning call

The waves were small at Hookipa yesterday morning, but also very clean. Here's Todd.


This guy takes off fin first and then spins the board while hitting the lip. Pretty cool stuff.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai

1.3ft @ 13s from 198° (SSW)

Still a little of low long period energy at the buoy, check the webcams.

North shore
NW101
4.9ft @ 10s from 340° (NNW)

Hanalei

5.2ft @ 9s from 328° (NW)

Waimea
2.7ft @ 9s from 340° (NNW)

Pauwela

2.6ft @ 8s from 52° (ENE)

1.2ft @ 12s from 323° (NW)

 

The collage below shows the graphs of the four buoys reported above, clockwise with NW101 on the top left. I circled the rise of a new, short period (sorry, that's what 9-10s is in Hawaii) NW swell. 10s swells travel slower than what we're used to and so we're barely starting to see it at Pauwela, but it should keep building all day. BTW, GP's rule of thumb for the travelling time says 16h at 16s +/-1, so if we take 6 off the seconds, we get 22 in the hours.

 

But the more you move away from 16, the less accurate the approximate time will be and, as you can see in the "refreshed" Buoys to Maui travel time and Maui's shadow lines post, the correct travel time is actually 24.5h. That is also what the buoys are showing, so this swell will rise locally pretty much one day later than the NW101 buoy. Of course, it will have lost some energy, but the Hanalei reading is pretty comforting.

Not much on offer for my dawn patroller friends though. The 5am reading stayed pretty steady:
2.7ft @ 8s from 56° (ENE)

1.3ft @ 12s from 339° (NNW)
and the iwindsurf sensor is already reading 4mph onshore. It'll get stronger later.

Today a line of clouds will end a streak of 4 stunning days in a row (it's raining as I type).


The HRW model at the bottom of the Windguru page confirms that with adding some heavy rain around 9am. After that, it'll be onshore for the rest of the day.


Current wind map shows:
1) strong WNW fetch. Surfline calls for 5f 14s on Monday, but that's for the north shore after the refraction. The original swell will be much bigger and more west. I think that forecast is under estimated. We'll see what we get, when we get what we get.
2) these northerly close-by fetches are keeping us alive during this little break from the predominant NW energy. Don't fret, winter's not over yet. Next Sunday the 26th there will be a Jaws size kinda swell and that is absolutely normal. 12f 18s is the Surfline forecast at the moment, but it is obviously subject to change.