WSL Finals Forecast Update
Talk about curveballs...
When last week's long range forecast was published, there were only hints of a possible tropical depression interfering with the local winds for the WSL Finals event at Trestles, but things have since escalated.
Hurricane Kay has formed off the Mexican coast and is forecast to strengthen while tracking parallel up and along the Baja Peninsula towards California.
For most of its life, the swell-generating fetch on the eastern flank of Kay won't be within the Trestles swell window, and only once it pushes west of Ensenada are we expected to see any decent fetch falling within the swell window.
Current estimates have this occurring as the hurricane weakens rapidly, with a weak fetch of sub-gale-force S/SW winds expected to produce a short-range, mid-period southerly swell up to 3-4 feet for Saturday.
Note: this is local time, as is all further timing. 8am in SoCal is 11pm AWST and 1am the next day AEST.
Local winds are reliant on Kay's track, which being a hurricane/cyclone is unpredictable, though they look to be favourable and offshore Saturday morning and variable into the afternoon. We'll keep a close eye on that.
As for wave quality, with the swell not having much period we can expect it to come in peaky and mixed, not focussing as well as long-period S/SW groundswells do, but then again it'll also increase consistency and present many sections for big punts and turns.
This puts Saturday as a possible run day. The swell that was flagged in the Long Range Forecast was...and still is, due to arrive from the S/SW on Thursday/Friday, and only due to come in at an inconsistent 3ft, with the occasional 4ft'er. Local winds on Thursday aren't great with morning offshore breeze due to give into a fresh S/SW change mid-late morning.
All day offshore breezes are expected Friday making this ideal for competition with the slow swell. Again, that's another possible run day.
Looking at the rest of the waiting period and the long-range S/SW groundswell due from the south-east of New Zealand has been downgraded a touch and looks to be more in the 3ft to possibly 4ft range next Thursday but with less favourable north-west winds (variable early). The downgrade will almost surely mean the WSL will have to pull the trigger early, so either for Friday's clean but inconsistent swell, or wait for the weak swell from Hurricane Kay on Saturday.
Comments
Friday our time?
All times are local.
I'll edit the article to state that.
The lower the swell period the better the odds for the two Brazilians.
World title determined by slop wave Spinner airs…..uggghhhh.
This is not the surf forecast I ordered.
Damn looks like Toledo will win then.
Just can not understand why Trestles/lowers over pipe or somewhere/anywhere way better than Lowers for the final. Lowers makes surfing look lame Pipe or similar spots shows how rad this sport is.
I guess most surfers on reddit are Americans and beginners to intermediate and a huge part of the surfing population, who love the final at Lowers. -Relatable, they often surf waves worse than that.
89% of the time most people everywhere are usually surfing waves similar or worse but yeah agree - it’s not like your watching the CT to see the guys doing what Joe Bloggs does or surfing what Joe Bloggs surfs. They should be helicoptering them into some 8-10 metre Antarctic ground swell 3000km south of WA, pulling into huges spitting barrels breaking on submerged icebergs ledges with albino killer whales breaching in the background. Fuck trestles!
So bender Saturday? But bender Friday also just in case. Wifey ain't gonna be happy with your forecast Craigoss…
Hurricane Kay advisary
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep2+shtml/085247.shtml?key_mes...
Sealevel rise probability Report for the US 2022
"Long-term sea level rise will affect the extent, frequency, and duration of coastal flooding events. High-tide flooding events that occur only a few times a year now may occur once a month, or once a week in the coming decades. "
Reference
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/hazards/sealevelrise/sealevelrise-tech-rep...
Surely they'll run Saturday for the dollars
Latest ECMWF update has wind arriving with the swell. It's going to be tricky.
"As Green House Gas (GHG) emissions and global temperatures continue to rise, the likelihood of very high U.S. sea level rise does too. If global warming reaches 2°C (warming levels are already >1°C), corresponding to a 50% chance that U.S. sea level as a whole will rise at least 0.7 m by 2100 and 1.2 m by 2150 (measured since 2000),...."
https://aambpublicoceanservice.blob.core.windows.net/oceanserviceprod/ha...
Fantastic Intel bbb thx. This is happening now, tide by tide, millimetre by millimetre, the ocean is encroaching.
Maybe the numbers do not stack up to move the whole circus to an exotic location for a one day webcast. Still, only top rank surfers seem to win at Trestles.
I think there may be issues getting Pipe exclusively for the a day for only 10 surfers and often no Hawaiians.
There is nothing like onshore winds plaguing a long over hyped
South swell.
Only a US surfer knows the feeling..........
LD
any mainland surfer for 360 days in any year" how's the surf?"
any Aussie whos travelled the mainland states except 5 days in any year "PUSS!"
.
One day out, no forecast, no calls from WSL.
Very weird. It's the final event and title decider!
100% exactly my thoughts!
Whats mexico's swell window looking like send em down there for the cyclone! :D
Far too much wind, storm too far north.
Cabo points could be all time.
I guess the waves get great sometimes yet according to a buddy who surfed one down there in 2014.
About 3 or 4 hours after the surf it hit landfall and proceeded to blow out most of the hotels and resort windows.
He was travelling with a young family who were not enjoying the outcome.
Said " it was Fucken gnarly".
The storm that is. Pretty sure they were evacuated also.
Yeah they are mostly in Cabo san Lucas but further along at the old town of San Jose del Cabo you would be safe as it is (sensibly) a little further inland and sheltered. Around the corner of the cape at 9 palms and zacaititos could have windows when it would be pumping.
They have just called in Yellow eg could be on in the next 24 hours
I vaguely remember the WOZ extending the waiting period of a comp, a couple years back, to catch a swell. Wonder if it’s possible to extend until 17th/18th in this instance?
Almost certainly can't be done. Trestles already comes with a lot of limitations as it's in a State Park - sorta equivalent to our National Parks - and a very popular one at that. The waiting period would've been carved out many months ago with no leeway for flexibility.
To make the point: The Trestles comp has always had very strict running hours. Even if it's pumping in the arvo they can't squeeze another heat or two out of the daylight hours.
Yes, fun fact they can only run one day in the weekend. If they run Saturday. They can not run on Sunday .
Unfortunately it's just Trestles and not a wave like Teahupoo etc where it's worth extending for a possible swell.
So I reckon they'll just run on the weekend local time.
We've still got divergence this morning regarding local winds, with ECMWF now the one looking a touch better.
After watching JJF’s Fiji clips he’s been dropping the last week the thought of him not being in the title race and also the title it’s self being decided at lame old trestles really doesn’t do much for me.
I hope an Aussie gets up but imo clearly the best surfer in the world isn’t even in the race.
I know hey.
I doubt it's deliberate, he doesn't seem to have a nasty streak in him, nor Slater's incurable insecurity, but those clips just make Trestles and the title race seem all a bit meh.
Yep.
The lines he’s drawing, how hard he’s belting it and his casual style around the tube is as good as it gets I reckon.
It’s funny how you see Nathan F, who is an incredible talent as well obviously, comment on John’s clips and even he can’t believe the surfing his bro is doing.
Just take it to Margaret's ..you have "Main Break" and "The Box" to choose from, also the Indian Ocean generally throws up a bit of Swell...Oh ...I forgot its not about the "Surf"though... its about the Crowd and selling WSL merchandise.
do the WSL even care about the walking trails and bikes lined up on the beach..
Inconsistent 3foot with freshening SSW winds.... a showdown between Flips frontside reverses or Italos backhand cartwheels (probably more visually appealing imo). Too small for those big frontside boosts Robbo does to have any impact. Ethan railgame will be sharp and fast but i feel like the pressure might get to him. Kanoa can have impact with his frontside and probably can give Toledo a run. Wish i was talking about airdrops instead of gymastics. Womens, hard to see Carissa losing. Defay in small slow sloppy rights might be spritely, as will Brisa. Steph definitely a smoky. Dunno how hard these condittions will be for Tati.....she's got a mean backside crack so if she gets enough sections. Sounds like it's gonna be horrible though. Just on Goofys point above about JJF, i wonder how he would have fared in these conditions. An uninjured JJF may be well out ahead of the field again, only to lose in 3foot onshore Trestles. Gonna be hard to stay up all night for this one.
Yeah good point Paul, it’s not really his bread and butter is it.
Wozzle puss.
When is the format gonna change to reflect the best overall surfer?
We only need 5 comps a year IMHO:
1. A big heaving left-right "A" Frame beachie.
2. A long right hand point.
3 Chopes.
4. Pipe.
5. One big wave comp. Mav's/Escondido/Jaws.
Best overall surfer is the world number one.
1,2 and 5 would all be in Mexico! If your tour got up, JJF would win 9.5 times out of 10.
Not necessarily juega.....
1. There are heaving 'A' frames on literally every continent - Europe, North and South America, Australia, Asia and Africa literally have hundreds to pick from.
2. Neither J Bay nor Kirra are in Mexico.
5. Escondido is not the only professional standard big wave venue in the world.
My tour would also not be stationed in the exact same place two years running, we would rotate the venues and also hold the comps at different times of the year to accommodate whatever seasons we need to take advantage of. The other benefit of doing things this way would be that the locals at the big venues get a rest and get to enjoy the benefits of their playgrounds without the Wozzle shit show every 12 months right in the middle of their seasons...
Agree that JJF would be hard to beat, but he'd have plenty of great competition and by rotating everything biannually or even triennially you'd have plenty of variation in conditions.
Grand final surf looking putrid?
Beer goggles will fix the thing.
Chins up boyz how many times have i heard that the contest will be fuked only to find it pumping on finals day !
yew.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wasn't it as big as it gets last year and was (as it was succinctly put) PUSS, and I forgot to order another barrel from Deeds brewery. Bugger.
Is that genuine optimism or you already beering up?
Surflie has posted its forecast for the event. It makes for comical reading.
Yeah no chance of Hurricane swell Friday..
"Modest Hurricane Kay swell Fri, larger surf possible Sat."
With Hurricane Kay pushing a cumulative agitated sea state up the coast of Baja towards Southern California for several days, won't that have an effect on the actual swell generated once it moves past Ensenada and into the Trestles window?
Quite different than if the storm is starting from a flat sea once it enters the Trestles window -
https://www.metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/products/ep1222.gif
It actually tracks across Baja while moving north, cutting off the swell generating fetch so there's no pre-existing sea state. Strong to gale-force NE winds in fact.
Once it pushes back west offshore during Saturday local time we're only due to see sub-gale-force, off-axis S/SW winds. Not great.
Thanks Craig - we need to move the track of this hurricane several hundred kilometres west and we would have a better forecast scenario for all concerned - like Hurricane Marie in 2014
https://www.severe-weather.eu/wp-content/gallery/tropical/hurricane-mari...
Will there be any swell produced before the hurricane tracks over the peninsula? From its current position?
Nah it's very, very shadowed by all the headlands and land mass jutting out west, to the north of it.
Any upgrades or different track of hurricane. Needs to move west ( not north) and park there.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-9...
I don't know if you can still go forward in time with Earth-nullschool but when it first came out you could.
If you can i can't figure out how.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2022/09/08/1800Z/wind/surface/level/orthog...
1. Click on the lower LHS black "Earth" button;
2. then go to the menu "Control" section
3. then across to click >> to move time forward by 6 hrs... to reset click "now" button
The default view is wind speed & direction
In Oceanside at the moment super hot last few days has been a bit of swell here...last night was about 4ft on the sets big lulls...local call is Saturday quite a bit bigger
Set up for the tricksters to win! Much rather see power surfing in waves of consequence!
Yeah Fraser looks like they might try and surf the cleaner, inconsistent S/SW groundswell ahead of the Hurricane energy.
Winds Friday look very average though, a touch better tomorrow though only clean in the AM.
You think they might run tonight our time Craig - within the yellow alert?
Sounds like they will. NW winds shifting fresh NE through the day. Hopefully no fog early..
so what happens if they pull the trigger and the fog rolls in......?
If there's fog it will be early with the light winds. It'll dissipate with the onshore stirring.
https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cgi/cgi-bin/wxmap_single.cgi?area=gfs_g...