And Then There Were Waves Again
By Carlos Rock
There is a nice 3 to 5-foot northwest swell on the rise starting Friday, as well as a 2 to 5-foot south/southwest swell to start off September the right way, by forgetting about Maui’s wave-starved August.
Inhale and exhale, the flat spell is over. This swell arrived like a breath of fresh air and excitement. The gentle rolling hills of water have returned in the beautiful form of a NW swell with light winds, and surfers could not be happier.
It looks like the winter season is slowly starting to kick into gear by giving surfers a little taste of what is to come.
With this being the first swell and all, everyone will hear about it, so don’t be surprised when lineups are packed to capacity at popular spots like Ho’okipa Beach Park.
The tradewinds have calmed down as well to the 5-15 mph range, which translates to very glassy mornings and mild onshore afternoons due to the seabreezes. This swell is expected to hang around until Saturday so be sure to get out there while it lasts.
What a long dry spell. Add the alarming number of shark attacks, and that turns into a really bad month for surfing. And that was exactly what August was.
Hopefully September will be the exact opposite. Not to hype it up too much, but it is already looking promising, probably because surfers have been deprived of good waves for a while.
There is a 5 to 9-foot north swell already popping up on the charts. Hopefully it lives up to the hype.
This could be a sign of a very good early season like last year with that huge swell that made Jaws break for the first time in October in recent history.
What is really interesting about this time of year when the seasons are transitioning between each other is they sometimes overlap in the late/early times. For example, there is high possibility of there being one or maybe two big south swells in September, as well as a few big NW swells in October. So surfers can really benefit from these transition months.