Fifth Street (Miami) Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G’day, Rusty here. Gotta be straight with you – the next couple of weeks are looking flat and pretty grim for a surf at Fifth Street (Miami). The finder is showing zero on the scoreboard for the entire 16-day window, so I ain't gonna sugarcoat it. There’s just no real swell on the horizon, and the little bumps we do see are getting chopped up or are too weak to bother with.

The water’s sitting at a warm 87° with a 2° anomaly, so it's a touch warmer than usual for this time of year, which is nice if you’re just having a swim, but it’s not helping the surf.

We’re looking at a long stretch of nothing. From now through the end of the month, the swell heights are mostly below 3ft, with the occasional 0.3ft to 2ft dribble. The wind’s all over the place too, mostly cross-onshore or onshore, keeping things choppy and messy. The combined energy is weak, mostly in the single digits or teens (10, 5, 4, 6), with a few brief pushes to 50 and 40 around Wednesday the 26th, but even then the swell is short-period junky stuff – not worth paddling out for.

There’s a little glimmer around the 23rd and 24th, with swell pushing to 2ft and 3ft from the SSE, but it’s cross-onshore and gusty, with a combined energy of just 18 and 28. That’s not surf, that’s just whitecaps. The period is a punchy 4-5 seconds, which tells you it’s all windswell and no push. Not a single period over 11 seconds in the whole run, and even the 9-10 second stuff is only on the tiny 0.3ft days. Long-period groundswell? Forget it.

By the time we get to the last few days of August and into September, it stays small. The 26th and 27th might see 3ft and 3ft from the ESE and E, but it’s onshore ENE wind and still short-period. The best of the “surf” might be the clean glassy morning on the 22nd – but there’s only 0.7ft on offer, so it’s a lake paddle, not a surf.

Honestly, with this much swell, wind, and a beach-and-reef setup, it looks like it’s gonna be a better window for the kite surfers than the paddle surfers. There’s just no push and no shape.

The only real positives are the clean windows – like Tuesday morning the 18th with light WNW cross-off wind and clean conditions, and Saturday morning the 22nd with glass. But with no swell, clean conditions just mean a flat ocean. If you’re desperate, maybe look at the 23rd afternoon – 3ft at 5 seconds from SSE, but it’s cross-onshore and bumpy. Not worth the drive.

The long-range stuff around the 26th onwards is still looking small in size, with the raw energy picking up a bit to a moderate 40-50, but the period is still nothing to write home about.

So, it’s a blank run, plain and simple. It’s not unusual for this area to go quiet like this. The board stays in the car, the wetsuit stays in the bag. Keep an eye on the charts, but for the next 16 days, I’d be making other plans. This is Rusty, signing off.

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