Sunday 7 14 19 morning call

The swell rose all day yesterday, but very slowly. Maalaea had occasional head high sets and a lot of wind.


This is the view from the inside of the tube. Photo and action by Loch Eggers.


I don't have photos of the contest at the Lahaina harbor, but here's how little Marley decompressed and got over the disappointment for a loss in his second heat.


3am significant buoy readings and discussion
South shore
Barbers
3.1ft @ 18s from 189° (S)

2.4ft @ 15s from 180° (S)

Lanai
3.7ft @ 18s from 186° (S)

2.4ft @ 15s from 187° (S)

 

The answer to yesterday's question was hypothesis 1. The new bigger long period swell was "underneath" the readings of the slightly older one and now is well the dominant one. Below is the graph of Lanai on the left, the one of Samoa I posted on Tuesday in the middle, and the Surfline forecast on the right. Notice how the two graphs are qualitatively extremely similar, the swell just lost 4 feet on the way. I was expecting that, but I also was expecting a slight increase in the period. How much the period grows with travel is something I have no much info about. I actually only learned it a few years ago from a post by Pat Caldwell. In this case, it seems that the period didn't grow at all.

 

Based on the Samoa graph, Tuesday I predicted that the swell was going to peak Saturday night and that seems to be confirmed by Lanai's graph. Surfline still has it on the way up all day today instead, but we can say already that that timing is wrong. It happens quite often that the WW3 model makes these kind of mistakes, I don't understand why it's not retro-feedbacked by the readings of the buoys on the way. Sophisticated and complex models running on extremely powerful computers should be able to do that. Anyway, we'll know for sure only tomorrow.

 

3.7ft @18s is the biggest swell of the season so far, as usual many spots will be closing out, got to look for the "corners" of the coast line. Good luck for the search, here's a double overhead wave at Breakwall I just caught... on the webcam, I mean.


Here's another bomb at the harbor. I better get going...


North shore
Mokapu
3.5ft @ 5s from 87° (E)

2.4ft @ 9s from 102° (ESE)

Wind map at noon.

All signs of NW energy are going and with that small size and easterly direction of a windswell the north shore is going to be flat today.

North Pacific has a very weak N fetch, but it's close enough to possible send something in a couple of days.


South Pacific has a couple of small/narrow fetches.


Morning sky.