Too big everywhere on the north shore yesterday, the harbor was packed. This guy took off on the outside peak, brilliantly negotiated the double-up step and perfectly pulled in into the barrel.
I often wonder how the waves were in that area before the harbor was built, but it's easy to guess that they would have been out of control big like it was everywhere yesterday in the open ocean. Instead, thanks to the filtering action of the narrow opening, that's what we get to surf. I am happy that the Kahului harbor is there and was built the way it was built. I did not investigate on the topic, but that can easily be the best "inside of a harbor" wave in the world.
4am significant buoy readings and discussion.
South shore
No southerly energy at the buoys, check the Lahaina webcam if interested, for size, conditions and consistency.
North shore
NW101
16.8ft @ 19s from 333° (NNW)
Waimea
Pauwela
The Pauwela buoy was deployed yesterday and is back online.
Giant swell on the rise all day. The extremely complex evolution of the captured fetches that kept building seas over existing seas is comically illustrated by Pat Caldwell on his new SNN page, from which I'm going to snip just a small paragraph.
Commas, commas, and more commas– that’s what the satellite view of clouds over the north central Pacific has looked like for the active phases of recent weather systems. The first massive comma was 1/12-13, related to local surf 1/14-15. The next comma is seen 1/15, and is associated with the expected upcoming giant surf 1/16.
If you read the whole article, you might find that the below fetch maps of January 12 through 15 will help.
Below are the graphs of NW and Waimea together with the Surfline forecast. At 6.8ft 13s (Pauwela 4am) Hookipa would be totally surfable (at least by experts), but with rapidly building 1.9ft 25s at 4am, I would recommend to look for more sheltered places, as it might become out of control pretty quickly.
Many pros from Oahu and other places are already on the island to surf either Honolua Bay or Jaws. The local peak of the swell should be at sunset, but it will be a windy afternoon, so the conditions will be best at the bay, provided it will hold the size (which I'm not so sure). Super glassy instead tomorrow morning (hence good for Jaws), but the swell might have declined a bit already.You know, 40 ft faces instead of 60...
Wind map at noon .The other ones can be found at link n.-2 of GP's meteo websites list in the right column (click on animation of the 10 meter column).
Fetches map (circles legend: red: direct aim, blue: angular spreading, black: blocked).
North Pacific (about 4 days travel time from the NW corner of the North Pacific):
South Pacific (about 7 days travel time from east/west of New Zealand):
Morning sky.
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