The Lexus Pipe Pro
January 27th - February 8th, 2025

The Lexus Pipe Pro waiting period has begun, and with it so have the lay days. The WSL have called off both today and tomorrow with hope that Wednesday provides a window of clean surf and inconsistent north swell.

As discussed last week, the swell-producing jetstream - which served the North Shore so well during December and most of January - has broken down and developed a big wobble in it, resulting in a flukey setup throughout the North Pacific Ocean.

As a result, we’re relying on funky swell sources for this coming week with Wednesday’s swell (Thursday Australian time) generated by a brief fetch of N/NW gales off the Aleutian Islands. After that, a low forming directly north of the islands over the coming days should generate a slightly stronger northerly swell for Friday.

Wednesday’s mid-period N/NW swell looks to only come in around the 4ft range, with the odd 5ft set possible early, easing through the day. Conditions will be nice and clean as a deepening trough west of the islands moves in, bringing freshening offshore winds.

While far from great, Wednesday is likely to be a competition day thanks to the rest of the period remaining less than ideal.

Thursday will be a lay day as the deepening trough moves across the islands, bringing strong south-west onshore winds along with no new swell.

Friday is a tricky one: good swell, bad wind.

The low forming north of the region over the coming days will project multiple fetches of gale to, at times, severe-gale-force N/NE winds towards Hawaii, producing a series of moderate-sized northerly swells.

The largest is due Friday with 6ft sets, though winds look poor and out of the west all day - expect another lay day.

Saturday looks no better as northerly winds spoil a slightly smaller, reinforcing pulse of northerly swell, smaller Sunday as winds slowly clock back to the north-east.

This puts us a whole week into the waiting period with only one possible day of competition.

Moving into the second half of the waiting period, we’re finally set to see a more standard west-northwest swell arriving from the western Pacific.

At this stage, the storm-generating fetch doesn’t look overly impressive, with a moderate-sized mid-period swell due next Tuesday/Wednesday across the North Shore (Wednesday/Thursday Australian time), peaking in the 5-6ft range.

The only issue is the local winds which at this stage look more cross-onshore than offshore, but there’s still plenty of time between now and then.

Keep abreast of updates in the comments below.

//CRAIG BROKENSHA

16-Day North Shore Forecast Graph
16-Day North Shore WAMs