Friday 1 25 19 morning call

A longboard, a SUP foiling and a SUP session for me yesterday. I spent the whole day in the Kahului area and didn't take a single picture. Fortunately Jimmie Hepp was at Hookipa were 5 braves sailors challenged the huge waves and the light wind. This is the usual Brawsinho out of this gallery.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai
3.5ft @ 13s from 269° (W)

I saw footage of head high waves in Kihei yesterday. Not too surprised, as the original direction of the swells has had a lot of west lately. And with that reading at Lanai, I wouldn't be surprised if there will be waves also today.

North shore
NW101
9.5ft @ 14s from 332° (NNW)

4.5ft @ 6s from 334° (NNW)

3.9ft @ 10s from 332° (NNW)

Hanalei
6ft @ 13s from 309° (WNW)

3.2ft @ 9s from 327° (NW)

2ft @ 11s from 306° (WNW)

Waimea
5ft @ 13s from 310° (WNW)

Pauwela
4.2ft @ 10s from 58° (ENE)

4.0ft @ 14s from 318° (NW)

4f 14s at Pauwela is a quite a lot less than the 7f 14s the Surfline forecast has for this morning. That means that I'll check Hookipa first and report hopefully before 7.30.

 

Notice how the numbers at the buoys are progressively smaller as we move away from the more distant one. That is because of the decline of size with extra travel time and because of the energy lost into the eventual refraction around land masses. Both things are more noticeable at lower periods.
 

Below is the graph of NW, Hanalei and Pauwela. On the first one, I circled in red a nice turn of the swell towards a much more favorable direction for Maui. IF that is true, there should be another bump in the swell in the second half of the day, but...


... I wouldn't get too excited because of two reasons:
1) I didn't find and NNW fetch in the past five days maps (picture below: Jan 19 to 23) that would justify such a reading as 9.5ft @ 14s from 332°. So I actually think that the direction of this bump is still pretty westerly, but the buoy has its direction detection abilities hindered by the active post front wind that is at the moment hitting it: Wind: 23.33-31.1kts from N.
2) whether it happens or not, it shouldn't matter much, as the wind will turn the conditions into junk in the afternoon.


Wind map at noon shows the onshores that will follow the front. Should stay clean till 10-11 according to this model, which has been spot on with what the prediction of the ESE wind lately. Let's see how it does in this completely different situation.


Better get used to the sideon winds, as the Windguru table below shows that the weekend and the first days of next week should to be dominated by a NE direction, which isn't good for anything, other than for wind/kite foiling on the north shore and Kihei downwinders (maybe).


North Pacific continues to offer westerly fetches, this time with the side dish of a small northerly one after the front about to pass today, but that's only going to create junkiness.


South Pacific has a long but far and weak fetch.


Morning sky shows the approach of the tail of a front.


This other image shows a lot better that once again we're just going to be brushed by the very tail of a massive front that extends from just north of us all the way to the Gulf of Alaska. What a perfect latitude we live at.