Empty Lots Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G’day, Rusty here.

Look, I’ll be straight with you – the next couple of weeks are a write-off for any sort of decent surf. The only break showing up in the forecast is Empty Lots, a reef setup, but every single day through the entire 16-day window is getting the big fat zero. The water’s sitting at 79°, which is pretty much bang on normal for this time of year, so at least you won’t need a thermal, but that’s about the only good news.

Starting today, Saturday the 11th, and right through to Friday the 24th, it’s all "poor surf conditions." The swell is tiny – we’re talking 2ft to 3ft from the SW and SSW, with a long period of 14 to 18 seconds, so there’s some groundswell energy in the water (combined energy between 218 and 926), but it doesn’t mean a thing when the wind is howling 19 to 22 mph from the ENE, blowing cross-shore and putting a lumpy chop all over it. The reef at Empty Lots is exposed to that SSE optimum direction, but the swell is coming from the wrong angle and the wind is just trashing any chance of a clean wave.

There’s a bit of a shift around the 18th and 19th, where the swell direction goes east and the period drops to 7 seconds – that’s short-period windswell, and the height pops up to 4ft, but again, the wind is still a fresh 19 mph cross-shore, and the surf is still rated "poor." By the 20th, the swell nudges 5ft from the east, but with that same 7-second period and a fresh 19 mph cross-breeze, it’s just messy, blown-out junk. On the 26th, you finally see a "marginal" rating for the morning, with a 2ft SSW swell at 17 seconds and a moderate 16 mph cross-shore, but it’s still only a 1 out of 10, and it’s two weeks away – too far out to get excited about.

Honestly, there’s nothing here worth paddling out for. The only standout, if you can call it that, is that the reef at Empty Lots is an advanced break, so if you’re a total beginner, you shouldn’t be in that lineup anyway. But with the wind and the chop, even the experts are going to be sitting on the beach. This is one of those blank runs that’s pretty normal for the area – sometimes the ocean just doesn’t cooperate. Keep an eye on the forecasts, though, because it never stays this poor for long.

Rusty.

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