San Diego Surf Forecast: Friday seeing a slow pick up

Friday will be a sort-of-ok to marginal surf day...a lot will depend on where and when you surf. Overall weather/wind conditions will be good but there isn’t going to be a lot of swell in the water, particularly through the morning.

We will have a new S-SSW swell (180-200) that will slowly fill in throughout the day, (eventually peaking on Saturday). NW windswell from our local waters will filter in through the background.


Well at least it isn’t dark blue...

Surfwise we can expect waves in the knee-waist high range at the average spots that have some exposure to the S-SSW swell direction. The top spots, mostly through Northern San Diego (which has a little more exposure to the S swell), will be in the waist-chest high range. The better combo beach breaks should pull in similar sizes as well. I do expect a few bigger waves coming through by later in the afternoon...we should see a few shoulder high sets at the top spots by sundown.

Winds will be light and variable for most areas through the morning with a few pockets of slight S flow at times but in general it will be clean throughout the first part of the day. WNW-NW winds around 10-14 knots will fill in through the afternoon.

Don’t expect a ton from this new swell early on Friday morning...there won’t be much energy showing through the dawn patrol and we will also be pushing towards a higher tide that peaks around 8:45am...both of which will keep things a bit slow and inconsistent. With that being said I do think that you should at least do a camera check in the morning...the conditions will be clean and there is some swell in the water, so while it won’t be big, there is still a chance at catching a few.

Oh one last note...looks like the tropics are starting to get a little frisky...we have our first halfway decent tropical wave/disturbance of the season starting to push around south of the tip of Baja. Forecasts aren’t showing it developing much (it hits cooler water and wind shear) but it is nice to see some activity down there.





Here are the tides...

02:30AM LDT -0.6 L
08:48AM LDT 3.7 H
01:47PM LDT 1.5 L
08:11PM LDT 6.2 H

Remember, if you need a forecast for the other Southern California surf regions make sure to check out my www.Socalsurf.com blog.

Have a good one!

Adam