Friday, June 09, 2017

Friday 6 9 17 morning call

Just a quick longboard session before work for me yesterday, the wind was too strong in the afternoon to do anything that I like. No Maui image of the day, this is massive Uluwatu on June 5th  from this page.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore

W
1.4ft @ 12s from 109° (ESE)
1.3ft @ 17s from 175° (S)

SW
1.5ft @ 11s from 121° (ESE)
1.3ft @ 17s from 206° (SSW)
 
SE
3ft @ 10s from 123° (ESE)
1.3ft @ 17s from 160° (SSE)
 
Directions all over the place at the outer buoys (that's why I say they are not reliable), but a very consistent reading as far as size and period: 1.3f 17s is not too bad and I encourage you to check the webcams if you're interested in surfing on the south side.

North shore
N
3.1ft @ 10s from 19° (NNE)         

Pauwela
2.1ft @ 9s from 11° (NNE)

A bit of northerly energy at the buoys, Hookipa might be worth a look this morning, also because the wind sensor is only reading 3mph at 5am.
 
Below is the graph of the 2 reported buoys. On the left, you can see how the significant wave height went up during the night at the N buoy, while on the right, you can see that that has not quite happened yet at Pauwela, but the individual swell is on its way up. As you can see from the table on this post, the travel time from the N buoy to Maui at 10s period is 13h, so we might see an increase in size locally throughout the morning.


Let's have a look at where this energy is coming from. Below I put together the wind maps of June 5th and 6th and I added a red arrow to point out the fetch that generated it. It was a relatively small and weak one and not particularly close. Comparing the original fetches and the buoy readings of the related swells is a very good way of learning how to predict the size of a swell when you first see the fetch on the wind map. I'm not aware of any other website that does a thing this like. Please leave a comment with the links, in case you know any instead.
No NW energy coming from that NW fetch instead, or it's too small to be detected by the outer NW buoys, we'll see if it shows locally tomorrow.

8am wind map shows light trades on the north shore.


2pm map shows moderate trades. If today the prediction is true (yesterday it was way off, as it ended up blowing pretty hard as usual), I smell some windfoiling in the air... got boards to try, stay tuned for the report if you care.


North Pacific shows signs of trying to stay alive with a couple of weak NW fetches.


South Pacific trying too, but the energy generated by the strongest fetch is going to be heavily blocked by New Zealand. Once again, I'm pretty stoked about this fetch maps available on Meteogram, as they point out fetches that in the past I would have completely overlooked (like this one SW of NZ). Check how much the great circle rays bend when you go south of 40 degrees latitude.


There's a bit of clouds around, but it looks like another another stunning day could be on its way also today.

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