Damp Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G'day, I'm Rusty. Let's have a look at the forecast for the Damp sandbar.

Straight up, I gotta be honest with you – this is a tough one. The next 16 days are looking pretty grim for any decent surf. We're staring down the barrel of a long, dry spell with barely a ripple to get excited about. The water temp is sitting at 66°, which is about 1° warmer than usual for this time of year, so nothing out of the ordinary there.

The first real chance of anything rideable is Wednesday morning, the 5th of August, with a tiny 1 ft swell from the east. The combined energy is a weak 2, so expect barely a bump. The wind is a cross-offshore breeze at 12 mph, which keeps it clean, but that swell is just too small and weak to be worth paddling out for. The afternoon is a complete write-off with no swell.

It's a similar story on Thursday the 6th and Friday the 7th – no swell to speak of, just strong offshore winds that will make the surface look clean but there's nothing to push your board into. The weekend of the 8th and 9th sees a slight uptick, with a tiny 1 ft swell rolling in from the southeast on Sunday morning, but the period is a short 3 seconds, so it's just wind slop. The combined energy is still a weak 4, and with a cross-offshore breeze, it’s clean but knee-high at best.

Things get even more desperate from the 10th of August onwards. We have days of glassy conditions and offshore winds, which is a killer combo for wave quality, but there's simply no swell to work with. The combined energy readings are all zero. The 12th of August afternoon offers a pathetic 0.7 ft bump from the north, and the 14th of August has a similar 1 ft to 1 ft pulse from the east-southeast, but again, with a period of 3-4 seconds, it's just not going to break properly. The sandbar is inconsistent at the best of times, and with this kind of energy, it's not breaking at all.

The final week, from the 15th to the 20th of August, is basically a write-off. There are a few more glassy mornings and offshore afternoons, but the swell remains completely absent. The only thing to note is that on the 18th of August, we get a strong 28 mph offshore wind, which would make for a clean-but-impossible paddle-out if there was any swell. The short answer is: there isn't. This setup is more interesting for kite surfing than paddle surfing, to be honest.

Look, it's a frustrating window. Damp rarely fires, and a blank run like this is pretty normal for the area. Keep your eyes on the charts, conditions can change, but for the next 16 days, I'd be finding something else to do.

Rusty.

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