Hurricane Gaston to be, could play out to be medium big and glassy for Us! Posted 11:00 AM Tuesday August 24 2016

Could Gaston actually bring us Big Glassy Waves?

I believe so, and here’s why:

First, Fiona is gone, so that takes away more onshore winds from 3 storms back to back.  Then, Storm 99TL, is expected to fizzle out, while Gaston intensifies.  (I added this part around 3:15 PM Wednesday, and that is, that I shouldn’t say, Storm 99TL fizzles out, because it actually will be the reason why the offshore winds that I hope arrive on Wednesday & Thursday, that is why they are so strong and adding winds out of the South to the offshores coming from Gaston.  With Fiona gone, that is why we can at least have some offshore winds.  But if 99TL is 45 mph winds and grazing over the Caribbean,  even though it doesn’t take a Northern climb, that is still enough to send a Southernly breeze up toward our coast.  I sure hope it does fizzle out though, not only for our surf, but also, more important, so people don’t have harm or damage around Cuba, Haiti & the Bahamas)

Storm details say that Gaston turns hurricane on Saturday.  But still not far enough North of us to have offshore winds by then.  However, then an upper wind shear (a low I believe) will weaken Gaston a little, and then by day 5, Monday,  it is expected to intensify up to perhaps 100 mph winds.  That is probably why the Magicseaweed.com models show such good waves for Wednesday thru possibly Friday.  This makes sense, because by Monday sometime, the storm is expected to head North as opposed to it’s current WNW bearing, and once it is a couple hundred miles North of us, wallah, those offshore winds.

Keep in mind, that this storm is much further out than our normal hurricanes from Africa.  This one will be about 2000 miles offshore.  So that is why the models show a 3 or 3.5 foot swell at whatever, 13 to 15 seconds.  But remember, Hurricane Leslie of 2012 was 4 feet at 12 seconds and gave us some 11 foot face waves in Satellite Beach 🙂

It’s still far out, but I think we will get 2 glassy days (Wed & Thurs perhaps next week), maybe the first a late afternoon glass, but nonetheless, 2 days of chest to 1 foot overhead, and glassy, at least down south.  And the typical 20-40% smaller up North but still perhaps awesome.

Oldwaverider