No photos from yesterday, this is Kevin Sullivan on an incredibly beautiful wall at Honolua in one of the December swells. Photo by OneMoreFoto.
6am significant buoy readings and discussion.
South shore
No long period energy at the buoys at 6am, but earlier there was something like a foot 18s. Super inconsistent in the water, check the Lahaina webcam
if interested, for size, conditions and consistency.
NW101
6.1ft @ 13s from 337° (NNW)
Waimea
5ft @ 13s from 316° (NW)
Mokapu
5.4ft @ 9s from 82° (E)
NW energy has been pretty steady at the buoys, reflecting a steady presence of fetches. Here's how Pat Caldwell described the ones that made the energy we have at the moment:
The parent low was long-lived and established a wide, long fetch of low-end gales over the 290-315 degree band 12/16-18 stretching from the far western edge of the basin to the central north Pacific. The head of the fetch has held west of the Date Line. Seas were mostly below 20 feet. Given the long travel distance and magnitude deficient source, only moderate or less surf is expected locally. It should be long-lived event, building Sunday, peaking below average Sunday night, then slowly dropping into late Tuesday. The more W component allows partial shadowing from Kauai on Oahu and increases the error bars on the surf estimate.
Below are the maps of Dec 16 though 18 which will help follow the above description.
Long distance to cover and not extreme winds, but, as uncle Pat pointed out, those two negative factors were partially compensated by the size of the fetch area. Home guess for Hookipa is around head and a half with some wind.
Wind map at noon .The other ones can be found at link n.-2 of GP's meteo websites list in the right column (click on animation of the 10 meter column).
Fetches map (circles legend: red: direct aim, blue: angular spreading, black: blocked, yellow: apparent direct aim, but out of the great circle ray map, so not 100% sure).
North Pacific (about 4 days travel time from the NW corner of the North Pacific):
South Pacific (about 7 days travel time from east/west of New Zealand):
Morning sky.
No comments:
Post a Comment