"It never rains but it pours."

There's more meteorological wisdom in that maxim than you might know, and it's got nuttin' to do with precipitation. Down here in the southern hemi, any coast that receives swell from the south is influenced by the Long Wave Trough (LWT).

The LWT, as we've described elsewhere, is a corridor of low pressure that circles the globe roughly between 30° and 60° south of the equator. It doesn't run directly around the globe but snakes north and south, and it steers any available storm along its path.

When the path snakes north it will draw storms north creating swell for any coastline in the firing line. And sometimes the LWT stalls, so rather than steer one storm, it will steer many storms along the same path, each creating a swell for the coastlines to the north. The swells will postively pour in.

This is what has happened at Tahiti this past month as a node of the LWT parked itself east of New Zealand guiding multiple swells up the eastern side of NZ and onwards to French Polynesia.

Knowing what was about to unfold Tim Bonython travelled to Tahiti twice, parking himself in the channel and pressing the little red button. Here's some of his photos from the weekend.

Right click to view full screen. And if you know the unidentified crew then please drop the names in the comments.

Surfing Visions | The official site for Tim Bonython Productions

Enrique Ariitu

Jesse Johnson

Unidentified, deep

Enrique Ariitu and Manutea Tahimanarii

Matahi Drollet

Russ Bierke

Billy Kemper

Mateia Hiquily

Unidentified

Benji Brand

Eimeo Czermak

Russ hurdling

Unidentified under glorious light