Santa Barbara Surf Forecast - Waves for the Weekend - 1/16 - 1/17/10

Make sure to read the full region forecast...it will help this one make sense, (Not promising any miracles though). Click here for the full forecast www.socalsurf.com.

Even though the swell is dropping a little bit overall…Santa Barbara likes both the swell direction and the swell period so we can expect some fun surf for part of the weekend. The only part that (pardon the pun) blows is the approaching storm that is set to start driving up S-SE winds on Sunday, probably bringing in some early rain as well. Overall if you can…try and surf Saturday or early Sunday…if you lag too much you may miss the window.

Sizewise both days look pretty similar…lots of surf in the chest-shoulder high range at the average breaks with some shoulder-head high, and maybe even overhead surf showing at the well exposed standouts. Points and Reefs will have the best shape…particularly the points since they like the swell-periods that are in the 10-14 second range.

Weatherwise look for light and variable winds through early Saturday and only marginal onshore flow for the afternoon. Sunday will start out with light/variable winds as well but S-SSE winds and increasingly cloudy skies will move in through the afternoon. Rain will be coming as well but it looks like heavy stuff will start after sundown.

Here are the tides…

01/16/2010 Saturday
03:24AM LST 2.1 L
09:32AM LST 5.6 H
04:34PM LST -0.5 L
11:02PM LST 3.9 H

01/17/2010 Sunday
03:59AM LST 2.0 L
10:03AM LST 5.3 H
04:59PM LST -0.3 L
11:29PM LST 4.0 H