Apache Pier Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, folks, Rusty here. Let's be straight with you: the next couple of weeks are looking pretty bleak for any real surf. We’ve got a long stretch of small, messy, onshore waves ahead, so don’t get your hopes up for any heroics.

The outlook for Apache Pier (United States) starts off flat and poor. Through the coming days, we’re looking at tiny swell, mostly around 1ft, coming from the southeast. The problem is the wind. It’s mostly cross-onshore or onshore, which is chopping up an already weak, low-energy surf zone. The combined energy is weak, with readings in the teens and twenties, and it’s just not doing anything for us. This is a long gap of nothing, with no real recommendations for days.

There’s a small blip of hope on Friday the 28th, where the swell bumps up a little to 2ft to 3ft, but it’s short-period windswell with a period of only 5 seconds. That’s going to be a crumbly, gutless mess, especially with the risk of thunderstorms and moderate onshore breezes. It’s a kite-surfing kind of day if anything, not a paddle-surfing one.

We see a couple of glassy mornings—Saturday the 29th and Monday the 31st—where the wind dies off completely. That will make the water look pretty, but unfortunately, the swell is just too small, dropping back to around 1ft. It’s still poor surf conditions, with combined energies only in the low twenties. You might get a few knee-high sliders on a longboard, but it’s really not worth the paddle.

The second week doesn’t offer any redemption. There’s a slight change on Wednesday the 2nd of September, with a jump in the swell period to 12 seconds. That’s a longer-period groundswell, which gives us a touch more push, but the size is still stuck at around 1ft. The morning has a lovely cross-offshore breeze, leaving the surf clean and promising, but it’s just too small to get excited about. The energy reading is up to 51, which is moderate, but it's still not enough for a proper ride. After that, it’s right back to small, weak, onshore slop for the rest of the period.

To be honest, the entire 16-day window is a write-off. We don’t have a single standout day. The swell never breaks that 3ft mark, and the winds are mostly against us. For a spot like Apache Pier, this is a real dry spell. We’ll just have to wait for the forecasts to change, because this blank run is pretty typical for the area when the SE windswell fails to materialize. Keep the boards in the car, but maybe don't wax them just yet.

Rusty

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