Thursday 6 22 17 morning call

Spectacular day of surfing on the south shore yesterday, conditions were excellent pretty much everywhere in the morning. Somehow I managed to take two photos of the only spots that were affected by the wind.


This one is a much better way.


3am significant buoy readings
South shoreW
3.4ft @ 14s from 167° (SSE)

SW
3.6ft @ 15s from 147° (SE)

SE
4.2ft @ 15s from 156° (SSE)

Outer buoys still up, the indication of the period is only the dominant one, but there's a range of period and directions because of the many different sources, that should make for higher consistency (read Pat Caldwell's explanation). The bottom line is: plenty waves also today with another pulse forecasted to pick up later in the day.

In the meantime that Surfline fixes the readings of the Pearl Harbor buoy (I forgot to send them an email, but I will do that this morning), one very important detail about it is provided by Pat Caldwell:
The southern Hawaii NOAA buoys show dominant wave energy has spread within 14-17 seconds. The wider spread allows more consistency to the larger sets. The estimate of deep water swell height at the southern buoys is 5-6 feet. The new pacioos Pearl Harbor entrance buoys shows swell height closer to 2 feet. This low value is likely associated with the shallow location of 35 m. The recent Barbers Point buoy was in 300 m. The additional travel of the swell over the mamala bay shelf results in a frictional loss of swell size as measured at Pearl Harbor. The swell direction at Pearl Harbor is also influenced by the sea floor shape and proximity to the deep water channel, which biases the direction toward 165 degrees.

North shore
3.6ft @ 8s from 75° (ENE)

Not much to play with on the north shore, Hookipa at sunset was pretty much flat.

In the attempt of making these maps a little easier to read, I'm now gonna try to use a 240% magnification before snipping it for the blog. This is noon.


North Pacific offers small scattered fetches all around, but the most significant one is the one straight north of us, belonging to that low that I pointed out yesterday. But I was wrong in saying that is the one that will be responsible for the NE swell in the forecast for the first days of next week (4f 11s from 50 on Monday), since this one will only make for a couple of feet 10s over the weekend. The fetch (not oriented towards us yet) that will make for that bigger NE swell is the one indicated by the red arrow. Sorry about that mistake. Not that it changes much...


South Pacific offers a nice elongated southerly fetch with a central section of winds up to pockets of 35knots. Nothing to be excited about, but the south shore shouldn't go completely flat after the current long lasting one.


Classic trades sky and another stunning day is on its way.