Surfing Waves

Hi Guys,

My local break (most local = 150 miles 2.5 hours) is looking decent this weekend with swell but the wind looks like its not going to play nicely.

I would like some advice please on how much the wind affects the surf. As I cannot go too often due to conditions and distance I really dont want to turn up to see 6ft mush.

How does cross/off or cross/on shore affect the waves?

This weekend I have the choice of these 3 breaks, in your opinions what would be the better day?

Cheers

Dan

http://magicseaweed.com/Cayton-Bay-Pump ... port/1060/

http://magicseaweed.com/Scarborough-Nor ... port/1129/

http://magicseaweed.com/Saltburn-Beach-Surf-Report/24/

Dantastic1985 wrote:I would like some advice please on how much the wind affects the surf.

Wind is hyper-important, as you've already worked out. The very basics of it are...

Howling onshore: Blown-out whitewater. Forget it.

Gentle onshore: Crumbling waves. Easy conditions - might not be completely clean but easy to get onto and easy to find a clean section.

Light offshore: Clean perfection. Ideal.

Howling offshore: Closeout conditions as the unbroken wave runs into the shallow water. May be hard to paddle onto the wave. Will knock small swell flat.

Cross-shore: Will ruffle the surface water so not superclean, but still manageable as long as its not too strong. Will often means that one way, the right for example, will work but the other way doesn't.

By gentle, I mean <8knots, and anything above that might start to make life difficult.

That's just the very basics.

Looking at those spots - and noting that I'm going on MSW's description, as I don't know them very well (or at all, in fact, from a surf point of view) - they'll all be affected by the wind, but all cross-shore and manageable. Saltburn beach looks like it would handle the SSE wind the best

Thanks For the responses guys. Very helpful. I love surfing for the reason you rarely just turn up and its the same as last time you went. Amazing sport!

For me, any wind sub 15mph is fine regardless of direction. My favourite is a glassy <8mph, rare in the UK.

Onshore winds are tough, but that is more because with an onshore wind you usually have short period local wind swell (around 6s).

Look at the surf forecast before every surf so you can build up your own idea of how the wind affects the waves.

Here in san diego when I expect wind I go at the buttcrack of dawn, it's usually nicer.

Seabreeze has a good primer on winds

http://www.seabreeze.com.au/info/wind.asp

Remember that, due to land and sea heating and cooling at different temperatures, you will usually get

- little to no breeze at dawn/early morning; and what breeze you get will be offshore (because the sea is warmer than the land - warm air rises and cooler air flows in to replace it; or the sea and the land are the same temperature and so no wind is created)
- slight onshore winds by about lunch (as the land warms up and is now warmer than the ocean)
- strong onshore winds in the afternoon (because the land is much warmer than the ocean)

Of course, if there is a strong pressure system in the vicinity, that will override the thermal effect and create its own wind.

dtc wrote:Remember that, due to land and sea heating and cooling at different temperatures, you will usually get...

Ah, there's an aussie talking

That's not actually true in the UK where Dantastic is talking about (or at least to nowhere near the same extent as a large landmass like the USA or australia).
The size (and shape) of the UK means that the effect is not as big, and its exposure to the weather systems usually means that they'll predominate over the seabreezes.
Also, because the temperature differential between the sea and the land is less than somewhere hot like most of australia, the seabreezes often don't develop at all.

As I'm always telling australians that don't believe me about UK surf, it'll quite often remain offshore all day in the UK even in summer.

dtc wrote:That's not actually true in the UK where Dantastic is talking about (or at least to nowhere near the same extent as a large landmass like the USA or australia).

I never realised this - I assumed that the UK probably is more affected by weather systems since its further toward the pole, but didnt realise that the thermal land warming is so much weaker. Sometimes in Australia we have huge high pressure systems that just sit over the coast for one or two weeks, the only wind is from the land/sea temp changes; and in Perth the famous 'Fremantle Doctor' whips up a strong onshore wind pretty much every summer afternoon without fail. That said, at least on the east coast, the wind often drops an hour or two before dark and you can get some good surfing in. Remembering, of course, to head in before its too dark and the sharks come out to play.

I read somewhere that the furthest place from the ocean in the UK is something like 70 miles. There are people who say they live on the outskirts of Sydney who are 45 miles from the beach... I guess we are talking different sized land masses

The UK does actually have some large thermal wind effects, its just depends where you are located as different landscapes create better/worse sea breezes.

Where we are at Camber in the south east we experience very strong sea breezes in the summer as the low lying marsh land behind the beach heats up and draws in the wind. You don't need a huge land mass as it is a very localised effect, sometimes it is literally just on the beach and the wind turbines about a mile inland are not spinning.

Also, the temperature difference between the land and sea can be quite large on a hot day, creating lots of onshore wind.

As DTC said earlier, the prevailing winds often predominate but the sea breeze affect can add to them producing a very strong wind or act against them if it is offshore.