i diagree I thought the hurricane season for 09 was pretty mediocre as well as the 09 winter. Stand out swells for Virginia beach that i remember was febuary 19. Some swell over spring break. Hurricane Bill and Danny. Noreaster Ida. and the swell last weekend that I missed due to going to my grandparents. Wish I didnt miss that one. But el nino years give consistant winter swells correct?
who cares if the amount of hurricanes was less than average? weve consistently had swell for the east coast PLUS the wind/sandbars were pretty cooperative. flat spells were pretty short followed by great stretchs of clean surf dont forget that vb is sheltered from south swell and has a wide continental shelf so it misses or weakens certain direction swells compared to your southern and northern neighbors
Hurricane season is overrated. Nor'Easter's are more frequent and bring comparable punch! 2009 i kept a "surf log/journal" detailing surf conditions, guys i surfed with and locations i surfed for every session (sometimes more than one per day) Total Surf Sessions for 2009 (including PR and OBX) = 97 Pretty cool. Also fun to reference when someone posts video or pic of sick surf with the date. I can cross reference those vids and pics with my journal taking me back to that particular day! Peace out 09!
Well since I just got back into the water in Oct after a 3 year break I have to say I am please. I am a glass half full kinda guy
And I took a little static for counting my sessions not so long ago.There are people out there like me.Man what a relief.
Not just counting...detailing em. Does that make me a kook? lol Last year this time..my guess was 85 sessions. So i exceeded that despite huge dry spells during last January and February!
I think it was a good year with the sand bars being re-adjusted so far this winter, thou the hurricane season sucked, thanks el'nino.
The sandbars switched around a lot in VB. It went from a shorebreak wave in the summer to slowly creep outwards. now it seems that the break is 100 yards plus out on a good swell. Is this winter suppose to be better than last winter. I remeber reading an artical talking about how bad the waves were in the 09 winter than in the past in the local newspaper.
ya it was in the pilot, I dont remember when really I think January or February, but it has a picture of the pier in Sand Bridge
As far as the Hurricanes go - We didn't get many - but the few storms that we got up the eastern seaboard followed pretty much ideal paths for delmarva.
I keep a surf journal too - '09 stood out for some quality tropical storms taking place in early August - other than that, it was a more-or-less average year for most of the year until late November into December, when it really turned on. A few more "sneaker" swell events over the summer than in other summers (b/c we had a lot of lows that sat offshore)
i agree that hurricane season is overrated. The strong swells we get outside of hurricane season are generally better even on the very active tropical seasons. Having said that, I would say that September overall was less than average, but from January to December, there was hardly any dry months.
this past winter sucked even though we got some swell i was on it but right when spring came i was crippled and then my late spring early summer i was trying to get myself back to my shortboard but then by late summer into fall and winter have been good with alot of swells on the weekends im not busy which is nice.
Last winter was pretty horrible, only day that sticks out is Feb 19th. Spring was below average with horrible wind conditions. Summer was dreadful until late, we did get exceptional swell form the few storms we had. Fall started very slow, but the year has ended very good. I think last year overall was pretty below average, but the swell events we did get tended to be exceptional. Then again in 2008 we were spoiled.
this fall was epic in my opinion. then again, i was unemployed from october-december haha so i was on every swell all day any time there was a bump
in my opinion there were a lot of close to epic swell this years especially in the fall to this early winter. we did get a couple flat spells but they would usually be followed up with a waist/clean windswell which would then be mixed with a larger swell(usually head+). im not trying to make it sound like it was the best year yet cuz it wasnt. but if you took your time to travel at all up and down the coast, you could almost always find some spot on the coast that was epic. (which is exactly what i did )