Wednesday and Thursday the 25th and 26th were days Laura and I have been waiting for all summer. Our "weekend" is Wednesday and Thursday due to our work schedules in a tourist economy - anyway we've had lots of beautiful beach days on our weekends this summer but generally lacking in the surf department and this time we got to surf! Wednesday we spent the day in Frisco and the waves were pretty small with some nuggets here & there. Laura got a couple of decent waves on her longboard and I managed one or two on the SUP. Laura took the SUP for a whirl as well but didn't really catch any waves. The highlight was the absolutely crystal clear water - dolphins running around. We grabbed some sandwiches from the Frisco Sandwich Company and enjoyed a gorgeous day on the beach! Thursday was the same on Avon beach (I'm sorry I can't be more specific about where exactly - you understand!). I got a call from Andy early and a text message from Stuart saying that they were headed there and that it looked good. Laura and I opted to sleep in a bit then made our way up to the beach with SUP, Longboard, and 2 shortboards in tow along with our beach stuff. We were greeted with waist to chest high beautiful glassy walls. We surfed all day and on all the boards and really had a blast - it was a clean easy workable wave with a few people out but plenty of waves for everyone on a few defined peaks.
Laura - Wednesday on the SUP
Laura on her first wave of Thursday!
Laura with a pretty righthander
Laura with yet another lined up left
Me turning down the closeout section
On to the storms!!
Hurricane Danielle is a Category 2 storm currently with winds at 110mph and it is in the process of making its turn to the Northeast and away from the US and Bermuda. Overnight Danielle was briefly a Category 4 storm when its pressure dropped to 942 millibars and was packing winds of 135mph. Today we are certainly seeing swell with waves in the shoulder high to overhead range although it was difficult to tell because no one was in the water when I looked. Unfortunately on the East facing beaches (at least here in Avon) it really isn't rideable - Northeast wind is making already rough conditions very choppy and it just doesn't look manageable. A look at the cameras on Frisco beach looks unimpressive but I may just not have caught any sets while watching the cam because Laura tells me that Frisco is getting bigger by the minute which does stand to reason. With any luck she'll get a photo that I can post here. The following photo is from the Avon pier this morning at about 9:30am I apologize for the quality it's just an iPhone pic. Truth be told a higher quality photo would just show in more detail the mess that's out there so this photo may actually be better!
Hurricane Danielle is a Category 2 storm currently with winds at 110mph and it is in the process of making its turn to the Northeast and away from the US and Bermuda. Overnight Danielle was briefly a Category 4 storm when its pressure dropped to 942 millibars and was packing winds of 135mph. Today we are certainly seeing swell with waves in the shoulder high to overhead range although it was difficult to tell because no one was in the water when I looked. Unfortunately on the East facing beaches (at least here in Avon) it really isn't rideable - Northeast wind is making already rough conditions very choppy and it just doesn't look manageable. A look at the cameras on Frisco beach looks unimpressive but I may just not have caught any sets while watching the cam because Laura tells me that Frisco is getting bigger by the minute which does stand to reason. With any luck she'll get a photo that I can post here. The following photo is from the Avon pier this morning at about 9:30am I apologize for the quality it's just an iPhone pic. Truth be told a higher quality photo would just show in more detail the mess that's out there so this photo may actually be better!
So the big question is "what's going to happen?" Unfortunately the current forecast isn't all too promising for surfing conditions - no lack of swell mind you but the wind forecast is calling for moderate winds out of the Northeast through Sunday which means continued sloppy dumping conditions. Monday's forecast for the wind is calling for a dip in the wind as well as a shift to North Northeast which combined with continued South swell could point towards some pretty decent lefts on the South facing beaches of Frisco, Hatteras and even Ocracoke. I don't like to speculate that far ahead so I'd say we should wait until tomorrow evening to start getting excited about that prospect but it will certainly be in the back of my mind.
Now there is also Earl out in the Atlantic as well which is, for the most part following Danielle at the moment but appears poised to make its Northward turn West of Bermuda which would bring it much closer to the US coast than Danielle. The current 5 day forecast looks like it's threading the needle between Hatteras Island and Bermuda as a Category 3 storm so we'll definitely be keeping tabs on Earl especially over the next few days. Earl's swell looks to be arriving starting on Wednesday or Thursday and then building from there - again a bit far away so lots can change.
Current 5 day forecast track for Tropical Storm Earl
Lastly Invest 97 is off the coast of Africa and looks likely to develop into our next named storm. It's way too early to get into any speculation about this one and there's plenty of other action to talk about - just wanted to mention it!
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