Flagler Pier Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, folks, Rusty here. Let's be straight with you. It's gonna be a tough stretch of waiting for anything worth paddling out for. We’ve got a long window with barely a pulse of real swell, so don’t be surprised if the boards stay in the car for a while.

We are looking at Flagler Pier, and for the next week and a half, it is flat out weak. The wave energy is in the dumps, with readings mostly in the 20s and 30s – that’s a far cry from any kind of push. The water temp is a balmy 85°, which is right about average for this time of year, so no worries there. But the surf? Forget it. We’re looking at ankle-biters and knee-high slop, barely a ripple. The first couple of mornings on Tuesday the 18th and Wednesday the 19th have some glassy conditions, but with swell heights of just 1ft to 1ft, it’s not going to be breaking. You’d be better off with a longboard and a lot of patience, but honestly, even that’s a stretch. This stretch of tiny surf and cross-shore winds on the afternoons is a real bummer. That Wednesday afternoon, we get a cross-chop up with a 1ft ESE swell, and it’s just messy. Thursday is more of the same, small and junky.

The weekend rolls in with the same story. We’ve got some clean, offshore mornings on Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd, but the swell is still stuck at 1ft with a period of 8-9 seconds. It's just not enough to push through the sandbars. The energy is still weak, well under 100. It’s the kind of surf you’d describe as a “lake” day. Then we get a bit of a pattern shift through the following week with more onshore afternoon breezes, but the swell stays tiny until we move into the next week.

Now, here’s the one glimmer of hope. Around Thursday the 27th, we finally see the swell start to act like it might show up. The morning will be glassy, and the swell pushes up to 1ft with a period of 15 seconds. The combined energy jumps to 67, which is the most we’ve seen all week. That’s a real sign of a distant groundswell, but it’s still going to be small. It is surfable, but you will have to work for it. The period is long, which is good for the pier, but the height is just not there.

Then on Friday the 28th, the energy finally kicks in. The morning shows a 2ft E swell with a 12-second period and the combined energy hits 173. That’s the first real, moderate pulse of the whole stretch. With light SW winds, it’s going to be clean. This is the standout. It’s not going to be big, but it will be rideable and clean. This is your window to get some proper waves at Flagler Pier, and with the swell direction matching the optimum NE direction, it should have some shape to it.

After that, it’s a bit of a fade. The energy drops again, with more cross-shore winds, and it looks like the last few days of the window – from the 30th of August to the 2nd of September – fall back into the small range, with weak 2ft waves and period dropping back to 8 seconds. It’s nothing to get excited about.

So to wrap it up: the next week is a write-off. Don't even bother. But keep an eye on Friday morning, August 28th. That’s the one time in the next two weeks I’d be looking to the ocean and thinking we might get a few clean ones. It's still not going to be big, but it's the best we've got. This is a stretch that will test your patience, but the gear will be there for when the ocean decides to wake up.

Rusty.

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