Gonna use a couple of photos from the windsurfing session by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery to talk periods. Yesterday there were two swells in the water, a 8s one and a 15s one. That is obviously the 8s one which was also much more consistent as it was generated much closer.
Well, if that was 8s, what is this, 2 or 3? Nah, that is the almost simultaneous arrival of waves belonging to different sets. If there's more than one swell in the water, that is definitely a possibility. But that is possible also with only one swell in the water, if the swell was generated close by and the sets didn't have time to space out between each other.
I took some windsurfing photos myself at sunset and here's Kai Lenny enjoying the freedom of trying gear from different manufacturers. On this wave, he respectfully gave way to the surfer, even though he obviously caught it first, as per etiquette. It helped that the surfer was Cody Young.
3am significant buoy readings
South shore
SW
2.1ft @ 14s from 172° (S)
Still southerly energy at the SW buoy, it's been fun on the Lahaina side and there should be waves also today.
North shore
Hanalei
4.4ft @ 14s from 321° (NW)
Pauwela
5.3ft @ 8s from 70° (ENE)
3.6ft @ 15s from 324° (NW)
The NW swell (see how wrong were the directions yesterday?) slowly picked up all day yesterday as it was predicted to do. Below is the graphs of the two reported buoys and the Surfline forecast. In Maui it should still pick up a bit more throughout the day, but probably not reaching the 5f optimistically predicted by the WW3 model. It does not matter at all, what matters is that the wind conditions will finally be ideal. Too bad that 5f 8s of windswell will interact with the clean NW lines and have them have many sub-peaks. I have business to do at 6am, so I won't be able to post a Hookipa report, but it'll be excellent conditions.
Notice also the sharp rise in the wave size predicted on Sunday, I'll talk about it more down at the fetches maps.
Wind map at 7am looks like surfers delight.
Wind map at noon.
North Pacific doesn't show any relevant fetches just yet, but you can now see the formation of the low just north of us and the counter clock wise rotation of the winds around it. As an immediate consequence, the trades will shut down. As a less immediate consequence, it will generate the swell that Sunday is predicted to reach 10f 11s. Nothing to get too excited about (unless you know where to go), as Pat Caldwell points out that: With the proximity, above average surf is expected. Proximity would also give overlapping short- and moderate-period waves making for an irregular breaking pattern.
Nothing of relevance in the South Pacific.
Morning sky.
No comments:
Post a Comment