Thursday 5 23 19 morning call

No photos from yesterday (hard to take them when you can't even leave your house), but here's a head high set at empty Breakwall from the Lahaina webcam, this morning around 6.30am. It's obviously not always like that, you need to check the webcam yourself to see the consistency, the average size, the local wind and the local crowd.



5am significant buoy readings
South shore
Barbers
2.5ft @ 15s from 191° (SSW)

Lanai
2.7ft @ 15s from 200° (SSW)

It's been an extremely good start of the south swell season, imo. Already two big swells and above average size waves for many days of the last two weeks. Here's how Pat Caldwell describes the evolution of the sources. Below you find the collage of the fetches maps of May 15, 16 and 17, which should help greatly follow his wordy and worthy description.
The SW Pacific S to E of New Zealand entered an active cyclonic mode 5/14 and held into 5/20. This placed sources over the 185-200 degree band relative to Hawaii. There were a series of fetches within this southern hemispheric source region that will make for overlapping events locally, keeping surf consistent through the period centered near 190 degrees.
The PacIOOS/CDIP Barbers Pt, Oahu and Lanai buoys 5/22 in the morning show the surf has remained steady for over 36 hours with a slight downward trend in the dominant wave period from 17 to 14 seconds. It also shows the start of a new event with a rise in the 17s band.

The new event was from a narrow fetch parallel to New Zealand 5/15. Seas grew over 30 feet along the narrow ribbon. As the fetch area shifted away from New Zealand, the fetch width increased as the wind speed decreased.
The event should slowly build to a peak late Thursday from 190-200 degrees. Additional long period swell is expected to overlap locally 5/23-25 out of 180-190 degrees from a separate fetch near the low center further SE of New Zealand 5/15-17. Near gale winds behind a front nosed well into the subtropics 5/17 and should keep shorter-period surf near the average locally into Saturday 5/28 as a new long period event arrives. 
 


Pauwela
3.8ft @ 6s from 86° (E)

3.5ft @ 8s from 90° (E)

 

Pure small windswell at the local buoy (so Hookipa flat to tiny), but the NW fetch we've observed in the last couple of days will provide the north shore with a moderate size swell over the weekend.

Wind map at noon.


North Pacific has a small NW and the windswell fetch.


South Pacific has a small S fetch and a bigger/stronger other one that is oriented towards the Americas, but we should get some angular spreading out of it.


Morning sky.