Postcard from Cali, glassy arvo in Santa Barbara

Hello Friends,

As expected, the wind’s been blowing steadily from the SE since last night but it’d started to fade by 0900-ish and as I write this surface conditions on the Surfline cams look a bit choppy, but not terrible. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there’s anything much above knee high. And what there is looks like weak, short period wind bump. So, if you can’t get in, you’re not missing anything.

Both the GFS and ECMWF models are not looking great for Sydney. If they’re right, your only chance of a wave is maybe Saturday when a short-period 1.5 metre straight south pulse might briefly give you something semi-surfable on what could be a showery day with light easterly wind texturing things up. Again, if the models are right, you’ll be back to dribble on Sunday…

Hope the models are under-calling it!

Meanwhile, here in my bit of California, there were little waves (contrary to the local surf report prediction) at two of our local points. The shot above is inside Campus point (the campus in question is the University of California at Santa Barbara). There was a little 8-9 second NW wind swell showing at mid-tide. Sets were in the knee to thigh range and while not very powerful, if you were a skilled longboarder, there were some glassy little runners to be had. The pics below are from the nearby Deveraux-Sands surf zone. As usual it was a bit bigger than Campus, so you could get away with a fish if you didn’t have a log or a mal.