First large swell for the 2015/2016 Hawaiian season
We're still over a month out of the start of the Hawaii season, and the Northwest Pacific is already lighting up with a XL swell expected to make landfall next Thursday. The North Shore will go from zero to 100 as a month of small waves is broken suddenly and dramatically.
With the current strong El Nino, all talk has been on this upcoming Northern Hemi winter, with statistics showing that these are the most active years for surf across the North Shore.
With that, a very powerful storm is predicted to develop off the Aleutian Islands later this weekend, supercharged by the remnants of Super Typhoon Champi (which is currently south of Japan) being absorbed into the multi-centred low.
The storm developing off Russia itself would produce a large north-west groundswell for Hawaii, but with the remnants of Champi being absorbed, the system will become even stronger with a broad and expansive fetch of severe-gale to storm-force W/NW winds being aimed towards the North Shore.
Stronger hurricane-force winds are forecast to develop at the core of the storm, setting in motion a large, powerful and long-period north-west groundswell due to arrive late Wednesday, peaking Thursday upwards of 15ft+ across the North Shore, with larger sets at deep water reefs and offshore bommies.
This is a great indicator for what's expected to be an exceptional season ahead going on past strong El Nino years, but we'll continue to closely monitor this swell and those to come over the coming season. //CRAIG BROKENSHA
Comments
wonder if they will get good winds like the first day in October 2012
Run the eddie or whats the rules other than min. size?
It doesn't look to be an Eddie swell, and they probably wouldn't move the event window.
Was it an el Nino year last time the event ran? I know it was 2009 but what caused the swell that year? Are we likely to see it this year?
Yes, 2009/2010 was a moderate El Nino. https://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm
Crazy good Hurricane swell for Hawaiian Islands mainly big island too...yikes its all happening.
The swell's still on track, but is now due to peak Friday and come in probably more around the 12-15ft range on the sets.
You called that swell so long ago craig & its still days away
Yeah, we did, last Tuesday we called it.
And the storm has already formed, with satellite observations picking up this fetch of 50-60kts aimed towards Hawaii last night.
The storm is currently weakening while tracking east-southeast towards Hawaii.
I think the slightly westerly nature and distance from Hawaii will stop it hitting that 18-20ft range.
The swell has dropped since yesterday but there's still a few bombs reeling through Sunset for the HIC Pro:
https://www.vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/hicpro2015/live
And that's not even the swell we've been talking about, was another large N/NW groundswell pulse ahead of this NW swell due Friday.
Waimea buoy is picking up some good figures, and there's some nice photos of a late Pipe session on social media.