Hello Friends,
Climbed up to the crows nest for one last look at the situation. The skies are darkening up, the wind is blowing pretty hard and there are occasional drops of rain. The ocean is grey and choppy inshore. Out at sea, the whitehorses are very close together across the broad and darkening plain.
Should one get up for the early, that is the question.
Let’s start with a look at the current state of play with the data from our friends at MHL.
The Sydney buoy was showing a couple metres of 7 second period south wind swell. Although this is up from a metre at 6 sec this morning, the consequence at a place like Dee Why is still only knee to waist high dribble. Wind is around the the 20 kt mark from the SSW.
Way down south, the Eden buoy trace shows that the swell went from around a metre at 7 seconds to 5 metres at 10 seconds as of about 1800.
Given the period (longer = faster), I’d guess that we will wake up to a lot more activity tomorrow morning. Whether it will get into the 5 metre range is another question, but I think it’s pretty safe to say it’ll be big.
The wildcard in the pack is going to be the wind. The latest from the Bureau is that we will have S-SW wind at 25-33 kts (ie, considerably stronger than what we’re getting now) and it calculates the swell will be in the 3-4 metre range.
Given the foregoing, my guess is that it will be a grey day with only a few surf options in the most protected corners. I would expect the surface conditions to be pretty messy even in those places. The open stretches will be Victory at Sea conditions.
The swell should drop at roughly the speed it came up and while it could still be pretty big on Weds, the wind is set to have more SE component. That means no real respite from the junky conditions. By all indicators we’re looking at big but not terribly clean waves Tue-Wed, then smaller with more easterly winds on Thursday.
We shall see!
If you’ve read this far, may I respectfully ask you to consider making a contribution to our 2009 RealSurf fundraiser? Even a tiny amount will be much appreciated.
cheers,
Don
