Attack of the junk

Hello Friends,

It would be impressive... if you were at Lake Michigan...

The southerly buster came in last night and, as our early rising reporters have already noted, it’s not doing the conditions any favours. Wind is currently out of the SE at around 10-15kts as I write this, but the Bureau says we can expect it to push up into the 15-20kt range before swinging around to the E-NE this afternoon.

Sadly, the wind is a too localised to push up anything substantive in the way of waves. Dee Why, like everywhere else in Sydney, was a tiny, junky slopfest. To their great credit however, a number of stalwart types were having a go anyway. Set waves were in the waist high range, but the short period of the local windswell meant they were gutless and feeble in the extreme. If you found these conditions along the coast of Lake Superior or Lake Michigan, you’d be whooping and calling your buddies. But in Sydney, you’d be organising a coffee before getting on with your day.

Cold, fresh water wave

Outlook for improvement is not stellar. Indeed, it looks as though we’ll continue to stare down the barrel of flatness for at least a week here in Sydney. The models are uniformly glum, sadly.

Oh well, Huey will return and these dire conditions will pass.

Given the utter flatness outlook, it’s been decided to pull the plug on our first demo day. Annoying, but what can you do? Anyway, we’ll reschedule it as soon as possible and naturally you’ll be kept in the loop.

The flatness should actually work well for the Little Penguin paddle out at south Steyne on Sunday as part of the Ocean Care Day festivities. We’re hoping to get at least 50 people in the water for the event, so if you’re handy with a board and want to get involved, jump over to the rego page and let the organisers know.

Go well, one and all!

Scientists: Mentawais quake danger still high

Science Daily.com has an interesting story about a study of the earthquake prospects off the coast of Sumatra authored by geologists from the Tectonics Observatory at the California Institute of Technology. According to the data, the big quakes in 2004 and 2005 took pressure off an area just south of where the 2004 event took place.  But that good news isn’t the whole story. As the article puts it:

The same cannot be said, however, of the area even further south along that same subduction zone, near the Mentawai Islands, a chain of about 70 islands off the western coasts of Sumatra and Indonesia. This area, too, has been hit by giant earthquakes in the past (an 8.8 in 1797 and a 9.0 in 1833). More recently, on September 12, 2007, it experienced two earthquakes just 12 hours apart: first a magnitude 8.4 quake and then a magnitude 7.9

But, asks the article, did that relieve all the accumulated stress?

The quakes hadn’t even come close to doing their stress-reduction job. “In fact,” says Ali Ozgun Konca, a Caltech scientist and the paper’s first author, who did this work as a graduate student, “we saw release of only a quarter of the moment needed to make up for the accumulated deficit over the past two centuries.” (Moment is a measure of earthquake size that takes into account how much the fault slips and over how much area.)

Geologists are extremely cautious about such forecasts, and the article concludes 

“There’s still enough strain to create another major earthquake in that region. We may have to wait a long time, but there’s no reason to think it’s over.”

Dee Why – mal material

If you’ve got something fat, thick and long to ride then you could have a marginal amount of fun at Dee Why this afternoon, but if not, I wouldn’t be bothered.  12 knots of E wind means it’s slopped up pretty major and at best it’s about knee high. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Onshore Mush at Curly

2-3 feet of short period mush with strong onshore SE winds- rest of the week looks equally poor so arrange something other than surfing for the weekend.

Mona Vale

It’s still pretty sloppy out MV this morning, it’s picked up to a whole waist high, but is still messy, closing out and just all round crap. If your stuck at work wishing you were surfing, don’t worry, your better off at work!

Narrabeen Rpt

Small, weak & seriously sideshore

C C

Overcast, dry and mild on the Central Coast this Thursday morning.  The swell is ruffled, weak and small at 1 – 2 feet from the southeast.  There is a southeast breeze at the moment but forecast to go east then northeast later.  Low tide 0635 and high tide around 1305.  Local barometer 1014 hpa, 93% humidity, 19 degrees C.  Have a good one.

Monday Evening at Curly Follow Up

Separation Breakdown At Curly!

To see how it plays out and ends visit http://www.surfphotosofyou.com/photo1959487.html

Cheers, Doug

www.wozthatyou.com