Today is Sunday morning, and it is a beautiful Sunday morning at that. While it may be a little bit chilly, it is a perfect day in my opinion. There is a cool, stiff breeze and the sun is bright. While there are a few clouds in the sky, they are too far to the west to bother us, at least for now. It seems really beautiful to me, because it reminds me a lot of home. I was thinking about it this afternoon when I was going to get breakfast, and yes, I get breakfast at 2:00 on Sundays. So I thought, what is it about today that I find so pleasing to my psyche?
Then it hit me. Today is exactly the kind of day that the surf is good back home. I know all of you blog readers might be getting tired of me talking about surfing and almost nothing else, but this hobby controls my mind no matter where I am and what disposition I am in. Even though I have been at school for a couple months, I feel that my surfing sixth sense is running strong. Back home, there was just something that I could feel in the air and I just knew that the surf was doing something special. What was it that I felt exactly? It’s pretty difficult to describe how I can tell, but it’s just something that is ingrained in me now. First of all, I can tell by the temperature and dryness of the strong wind that it is blowing almost directly from the northwest. In addition, I see the clear skies and feel the dry air, which is a common characteristic of a northwest wind. Then, I studied the trees and it looked like the wind was blowing from the northwest, judging from where North Campus and the bell tower are. And strangely enough, it’s like I am sensitive to pressure in the air. You may not believe me, but after checking the waves back home and studying conditions multiple times a day, it is something that has become fine-tuned. This tells me that there is a high-pressure over Chapel Hill, and most likely, all of Eastern North Carolina for that matter. The northwest wind tells me that the high pressure is pushing against a low pressure that is currently spinning off the coast. So what does this mean for the surf? The low pressure that should be there is sending significant waves to the East Coast, and probably Ocracoke. The Northwest wind means that the skies are clear and the wind is blowing directly offshore back home, which makes the waves super clean.
This is basically just a hunch that I have. Sometimes when I have this feeling, I’ll go out to check the waves and find that the waves are small, even though the wind is perfect. So as soon as I got back from breakfast, I checked Surfline.com, my most trusted surf forecasting website. It turns out that the wind is blowing directly northwest, and there is a fast-moving low pressure near the outer banks. The near shore swell heights say there is a 10-11 foot swell for Sunday, but it is moving quickly and won’t quite show up that big. While it is probably overhead in the standout breaks of Hatteras and Pea Island, Ocracoke will probably be showing a chest to head high swell with super clean conditions. Now I’m just really, really sad that I am not out surfing like my friends most definitely are.
2 comments:
i aint really a surfe, so i dont really know how to respond to this post, but i can certainly recognize a beautiful day and it is one today. For the middle of november the weather is amazing. Whether you think global warming is bad, it does make are winter months much nicer. There is a slight cool outside, but the sun plays a key part in the nice weather. I was actually being driven, windows down listening to some pleasant sunny weather music, and enjoying the last parts of my weekend. I'm glad this is good surfing weather, i dont really surf, and the one time i did it i was terrible, but i still enjoyed myself.
I didn't know you surfed but that sounds pretty cool. I mean I see those people surfing and I think about how difficult surfing is. I mean to me just standing on a board in the water is a task but with the water moving and all the waves it just seems impossible. I'm not into surfing because for one I can't swim and two I just imagine the worst things happening just from stories that come on TV. I wouldn’t mind learning how to swim and then learning how to surf but I just don’t know if I could trust the water that much.
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