Southern Hemi Swell

18 second?

*dies*

 

It's not so much the island blockage that we suffer from, but the continental shelf. Longer period swells need deeper water to survive traveling that far. This is probably the biggest reason we are less consistent than the west coast. The west coast shelf is much shorter. However, occasionally southern hemi swells have just enough energy to push through and usually show up as a small pulse on our beaches. I've never seen one greater than waist high.

 

I'd say usually once a year we see them. On it's own it's noticable, but hardly worth surfing, but if you're lucky and it combos in with a typical shot of south wind swell, it can make it quite a bit better than your average summer crap.

Off the top of my head I remember last 4th of july being a really fun day of south windswell mixed with southern hemi long period.

*edit*
Wow, just looked at the models and that is a very rare one, It looks like the rotation is going to be far enough north so that actual fetch will be pointed towards us,not just swell refracting , it is pretty much clear of brazil. It's rare that they go that far north. We will definitely see something from that, your guess is as good as mine if it's going to be surfable.

 

https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cg...ww3_s_atl&prod=swlwvht&dtg=2012081312&set=All

 

I saw that show up on the models this morning. The article was on http://www.obxsurfinfo.com/2012/07/25/long-slow-ride-southern-hemisphere-swells/

 

Great little article... Never knew about this.

 

I was not able to open this page. I read the article in obxsurfinfo, and that was very interesting. I'm going down there next week. Would love to see some of that long period southern hemi swell!

 

how long would it take for that to reach us?

 

Ya, we do get these occasionally, but the set up off Northern Africa, doesn't look like its going to send anything to the East Coast... It looks like Canada could see these swell, but there's not enough East in it to reach the Mid Atlantic or Northeast from what I see.

Go to Swellinfo wave period maps, and zoom out to the North Atlantic, and you will be able to see the long period swells coming from the Southern Hemi.

 

Looking at it a bit further, there is a small to moderate sized storm sitting off of Brazil that is sending fetch in our direction, but It doesn't look like a big enough fetch to provide us anything of significance.

 

Looks like most of its energy is focused on the eastern north atlantic

 

Completely agreed. As noted this doesn't happen very often, but if 2 ft of this southern stuff escapes the S Atlantic and heads our way and it arrives when there is 2 ft of local chop, you could have chest high sets.

 

Impressive South Atlantic Satellite Loop with this storm throwing energy northward:


http://www.eldoradocountyweather.com/current/satellite/eastern-atlantic-ocean-ir-satellite-loop.html

looks like the center is heading towards Cape Town, but the outer rim extends outward almost across the whole south Atlantic. Northeast and Atlantic Canada will likely get some of this energy mid week next week.

 

We got swell in the carolinas from a similiar system right before bert I think it was that rendered some of the longest waves I've ever ridden at a certain SC spot w/ amazing but rarely realized potential

 

Greenland? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

 

Ha ha that looks so amazing...all that 17-18-19 second energy headed north....with Greenland and Iceland are in these little pockets of energy.

Kind of snaps you back to reality when you look at the actual swell heights...

less than a foot to around one foot @ 18 seconds is probably not worthy of a road trip...and probably wont really translate to anything but who knows....

The NOAA WW3 output for next thursday the 23rd for the offshore Cape Cod / Long Island area when it peaks out at a whopping: 0.27 @ 17.5. and thats in meters and seconds!

But its still a cool curiousity and maybe the models just arent that good at predicting the size of these things and it will actually be more than what they are predicting.

 

hmm...I've heard much worse ideas.