Coolangatta surf reoprt

oh dear.

That time of the month is it dudette?

I recommend some camomile tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

Dudette ,

Advice ...... Be old school and learn how to read Synoptic charts .
that way you can only blame yourself if you get skunked ... SO LAZY !
let me guess Generation WHY ???????? wahwahwah !!!! heheheh
end of hanging shit
PS
make sure to upload a photo of said foot up own arse . and coin it " line up of the day " on the Goldie ...

dudette, a couple of points.

1. The surf report stated 4-6ft surf, not 6ft. There is a difference: 4-6ft implies a broader range of wave heights, with long gaps between the bigger sets (in our surf reporting system, the reporter has a choice to select 4-5ft, 4-6ft, 5-6ft, 6ft or 6ft+).
2. Our reporter Braithy's notes also said "Beachies are maxed out so head to the points which are a little smaller, but well groomed and packing some punch".
3. Many other surf reports between the Sunny Coast and Mid North Coast came in somewhere between 4ft and 6ft yesterday.
4. The Coolangatta report actually isn't exclusively for 'Coolangatta', per se - it's a regional report that covers all locations between Palm Beach and Brunswick Heads. Therefore, the Tweed Coast is also referenced in the report (which is what's usually meant by the 'beachies'), of which the Tweed Coast is frequently a foot or two bigger than the Cooly Points. This fits in perfectly with Braithy's description.

From my end, we probably have to do a little more work communicating the 'regional' aspect of the surf reports (to alleviate some confusion), however the personal attacks aren't really warranted. Braithy's one of our best reporters - he provides a broad, informative report nice and early each day with a couple of indicative pictures.

As for your conspiracy theory about the GCCC - I gotta admit, that's one of the best I've ever heard. Actually, it's so good I might just call them up and see if they'd be interested!

The swell didn't arrive yesterday? What was everyone surfing?

OK, you edited your post after I uploaded my last comment (where you added your points address to me).

Look, there is a worldwide problem where different people call different wave heights. The main point to keep in mind with surf reports is consistency - even if you disagree with the reporter's size call, then note the trends, the conditions and look at the photos.

Point in case - Braithy's report today is 4-5ft, down from 4-6ft yesterday. His notes go into more detail as to the specifics (ie smaller on the points, biggest waves on the open beachies).

And for further comparison.. our Ballina reporter says it's 4-5ft today, and our Surfers Paradise reporter says it's 4ft+.

This validates Braithy's 4-5ft report for today.

And.. if the swell has 'dropped' a little since yesterday, all three reports validates his 4-6ft report from yesterday.

I know I'm being pedantic, but we've got over thirty reporters around the country and regularly receive a wide range of feedback about the reports. If Braithy had written 3-4ft yesterday it would have been a major undercall, and we would have received emails about how the report was wrong in that regard (sometimes we can't win, eh?).

*slow clap*

All the best with your business too, fella.

Fuck there were some solid pulses on the tide here......less than a hunnerd miles from the Cooly-gatta. Both days. Easy 6ft.

So which section of the supery did you surf Dudette?

and you do understand the effect the tidal range has on certain pointbreaks, right?

Bit rough complaining about a free service dudette. Pretty hard to forecast an exact size for a given area unless the coastline in that area all faces the same direction and even then it's never quite the same. Take Yorkes in SA as an example - a few degrees difference in swell angle can mean all the difference with one break 4-6ft while another only a few hundred metres away is half that size. Even places like Victor Harbor where all the coast faces roughly the same direction Waits/Parsons is always a foot or two bigger than Middleton to Goolwa as the waves come out of deeper water. Always better to use these reports as a guide and make the final call based on personal experiences. Added bonus with that method is you can often score when the call is undercooked.

"I know that calling surf is entirely subjective but 6 ft is still that."

I sense a wee contradiction in this sentence...

6ft is double overhead if not more.........what height is the average surfer 5'8-5'10..so double that and add a bit = a wave face height of 12 imperial feet,look at your ceiling mate, thats 8ft high that is a 6ft wave in most surfers eyes..get your fucking hand off it.

dudette, if you're suggesting that all thirty+ of Swellnet's surf reporters only report whatever was forecast, then I can unequivocally state that this is not the case. Our surf reporters all check the beach themselves - and take a photo which is uploaded with the surf report, to qualify their claims.

I can't comment on the Good Friday swell because I wasn't on the North Coast at the time, however we've already had numerous other people verify 6ft sets across the Northern NSW/SE Qld coast yesterday. Therefore, it suggests to me that you simply estimate wave heights different to our surf reporters and forecasters. That's totally fine. However, I'd be grateful if you eased up on the insinuations.

that call sounded pretty spot on to me. a certain north coast point break on Sat was pretty consistent 4-5 ft on the double for wave face scale and there was some bombs that in my eyes exceeded the 6 ft call.

Surfed some GC beachies today that were well and truly over head high on the take off. Paddling past the shorey might get you some bigger waves....

Easter Friday came in under expectations but sat more than made up for it with open beaches in the 5 ft range and light offshores all morning. Oh and sunday as well.

Wash the sand out of your ladyparts, Dudette, and rejoice in the swell that keeps on giving. Who the fuck cares how big you, Braithy, or anyone else thinks it is. Did ya have fun? Most everyone else did, from reports, expect perhaps about 280 of the 300 at the superbank.

I agree that Saturday came in under expectations with respect to forecast size from what I saw around the traps, and particularly compared to Friday and Sunday. Burleighcam looked the smallest on Saturday.

http://www.comauhost.com.au/report/report.php?id=4626

I'd probably call that first pic 4-5ft?

I do note Dudette that even you said above in one of your posts that Snapper was massive and Kirra was small. Please define massive? And if you're surfing anywhere from inside Snapper (Rainbow) to Kirra and expecting it to be as big as the open beaches then you're kidding yourself. There is so much sand offshore in that bay at the moment that the bottom drag of the swell is ridiculous, thus taking all the energy out of the wave (particularly a lower period swell), hence making the breaking waves a lot smaller than the open beaches.

There's no doubt that Friday and Sunday were bigger than Saturday IMO.

Without wanting to drag this our further, if the surf's 4-5ft, and the forecast was for 4-6ft surf, I'd be hesitant to classify the forecast as incorrect.

Don - did you surf on Saturday or are you basing your opinion on the various surf report websites?

Interestingly, Burleighcam reported 2m surf Friday and Saturday, and 2-3m+ on Sunday. I suppose 3m+ is pushing the 8-10ft range, which (1) is bloody large, and (2) is in stark contrast to everyone else (who reported a drop in size from Saturday to Sunday).

Again, such reports highlight the idiosyncrasies of individual surf reporters.

As I said earlier, our reporters and forecasts have several choices for wave heights in each size range. We have the following fields:

4ft
3-5ft
4-5ft
4-6ft
5-6ft
6ft
6ft+
6-8ft

If the forecast was 5-6ft, or 6ft, and the report came in at 4-5ft, then yeah - it was an overcall.

However, our reporters and forecasters have the option to choose a slightly wider size range (up to two feet maximum, unlike other websites). This is based on our personal experience of how we relate wave heights when talking to our mates.

The other thing to point out is that not only do specific parts of the coast react differently to different swell sizes, periods and directions, but the surf also changes throughout the day. Our reporters currently look at the surf only in the early morning, however we're all familiar with the rapid changes that can happen in a short space of time. The perfect 3-5ft surf reported at 7am could be onshore crud at 9am... that's just one of those elements that are difficult to account for with a singular surf report.

But as for Saturday's swell, there have been more than a few people note that Braithy's report (and subsequently Steve's forecast) was pretty well bang on.

Let's leave it at that, eh?

As I said earlier, our reporters and forecasts have several choices for wave heights in each size range. We have the following fields:

4ft
3-5ft
4-5ft
4-6ft
5-6ft
6ft
6ft+
6-8ft

If the forecast was 5-6ft, or 6ft, and the report came in at 4-5ft, then yeah - it was an overcall.

By: "thermalben"

Personally, I prefer waist,chest, headhieght ,double or triple overhead , much simpler.

Sorry Shaun, 7ft doesn't exist in the scale of surf size. I can truly say I have never ridden a 7ft wave ;)

Shaun, we'll have those measurements soon (waist-high etc). However, I have encountered the same problem there - surfers disagreeing as to whether a wave is chest high, shoulder high or head high.

As for 7ft? As Craig says, it doesn't exist.

Haven't we been down this "how big is 6'" enough times before??

Me personally, am 6'2" tall and if the wave is over head when I bottom turn, it's overhead, but I don't call it a 6' wave and I don't know why, I just don't. But double over head is just that, double overhead. I personally think that is bigger than 6' though.

Is that clear and contradictory enough for everyone?

Sorry Ben, my first paragraph was not a dig at SN. It was more a dig at me (my forecast) as I thought Saturday would have been as big as Friday, but from the information I received it wasn't, particularly at the protected points (this could well have been a function of the swell direction difference between Friday and Saturday me thinks also).

And no I didn't surf on Saturday, but got several reliable reports from individuals spread out from the Sunny Coast to Angourie.

I did surf Sunday and feck it was epic where I was.

And there's no shortage of swell for at least this week!!!

The carparks that I d size of the surf in front of us of the vocabulary.

One of the prime characteristics of this swell (and which was discussed in the f/cast notes) was it's pulsiness.
With the semi-stationary high maintaining a very expansive windfield, there were numerous smaller fetches within that "master" fetch that were retrograding back into the Coral Sea trough system, creating distinct pulses.

There were several very distinct pulses over the weekend, so to say Sat was smaller is simply incorrect.

It actually seemed a fair bit smaller Sun morning.
I was surfing with an experienced 30+ year surfer with numerous Hawaii/G-land/Ment's trips under his belt during Sun mid morning as the tide was draining.
He asked me what I called the surf this morning. I said "4-5ft" and he laughed.
"What do you call this then? " he said as we scrambled to duckdive a DOH+ wave that would'nt have looked out of place at Speed reef.
There were 6ft+ pulses on both Sat and Sun, I saw them, I surfed them, I duckdived them.
Unless you had constant observation of the surf both days it would not be possible to make an accurate call on the surf size.

I was out on the reef over the weekend and in the boat the swell in deep water was 2M. In regards to the swell hitting the reef, call it 4', 6', 8', was able to stand bolt upright in the barrel comfortably.

@ don ,

Going back to a discussion we had a while back about Easterly or ENE swells , the old
" anchored " or back building Flat top High was discussed as the Best weather map for waves in your neck of the woods . It was also strongly suggested by yourself and maybe Craig ,that the " Broad and elongated " Flat top high really needed to have a Low Feature above it to tighten the Fetch up to produce solid waves .
SO would we be in agreeance that this is not ALWAYS the case . A Low pushing down on said system may ramp it up , but it will also shorten its Duration . Eventually Breaking or Distorting the Fetch .
The Sheer width of the Fetch , Duration , and length of Fetch was the catalyst this time . I know we had a Trough But i would suggest that this was a lot closer in and the Swell rigins built back out East of NZ Nth Island ???
Comments ??

It's not always the case but without some kind of feature such as a trough/easterly dip, broad tropical low etc etc you don't get the windspeeds to get more than the bog standard fully developed tradewind sea state ie around 3-4ft.

On an unrelated note why everytime i open swellnet on a pc do i have an advertisement peddling some of the worlds cheapest and shittest made cars taking up my entire screen?

Southey, I'm always a massive fan of stationary high pressure system parked over NZ longitudes, and for me, this one has certainly delivered the goods. However I do note that the swell on last Thurs-Sat was very very locally generated, and hence I think the trough certainly aided in swell formation during these days. The swell on Sunday was a very different animal IMO, with peak swell periods kicking out to 11-12 sec, indicating this was the longer range swell that I think you're referring to. This long range swell from Sunday is slowly disipating now, with the final remnants tomorrow, before we get another kick of smaller long range swell from NE of NZ on Thursday, but more so into Friday and even Saturday.

So that's over a week of constant E'ly swell generated from the top of a high pressure system with several embedded troughs/low pressure systems on her northern flank.

I don't agree completely with Steve's call of only 3-4ft from a stationary stand alone high pressure system. Even without embedded troughs/lows, then I still think a stalled flat top high pressure system having a lengthy fetch and duration on the top flank of the high could generate something in the 4-5ft range easily.

As an aside......what allows a high pressure to stall and become semi-stationary? I'm assuming something like possibly a lack of loww pressure in the upper atmosphere perhaps? Or am I comletely off the mark?

Good discussion.

Where I checked the surf on Saturday, there is an outer bank, and anytime its breaking the swell has to be in the 6-foot range. I go to this spot every time there is solid swell forecast just to use as a size guide.

Knowing this is a much more exposed stretch of coastline, and the fact I surfed Snapper on dusk the afternoon before and there were solid 4-foot sets rolling through and it was definitely on the rise, 4-6 foot seemed like a safe bet.

I surfed Saturday and there were bomb 6ft sets, and stages out there where the ocean would just pulse for 5-6 minutes then lull out in the 4-5 foot range for the next 15 minutes. My aching body and creased board have no problems calling it 6-foot.

Sunday looked to be in the same size, but as Don touched on earlier, interval had stretched out and the waves at times were throwing as wide as they were high.

All in all ... it was a pretty epic 4 days, regardless of what you call 6-foot.

Don, the upper level atmospheric setup is the big driver again in these situations.

An upper atmospheric ridge will help the stationary high stall as long as the ridge remains over the region, so look for the downward dips between each node of the Long Wave Trough to identify these ridges.

I surfed some solid beachies open to the east over the weekend with Saturday seeing 4-6ft waves during the morning before pulsing bigger into the afternoon with even a south facing location picking up 4-5ft sets during the late afternoon. Sunday was bigger again with 6ft+ waves across the open east facing spots with the odd 8ft cleanup.

It was a perfect setup for the East Coast and one of the better swell generators regarding longevity, quality and spread.

who cares? coolangatta is the most overpopluated piece of shit on the east coast