Galveston-61st Street Pier Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright folks, Rusty here. Let's be straight with you. We're looking at a pretty flat and quiet stretch ahead for our stretch of coast. The models are showing us a whole lot of nothing for the next couple of weeks, so let's manage expectations and dig into the details.

The long and short of it is this: there’s no real surf to get excited about in this 16-day window. We’re talking about a lot of knee-high mush at best, and most of it is going to be blown out or just plain weak. The swell energy is mostly in the single digits to low double-digits, which is just a whisper of the ocean. You’d be hard-pressed to even get your fins wet.

We kick things off with the morning of Sunday the 30th at Galveston-61st Street Pier. It’s glassy with a bit of swell from the southeast at 0.3ft, but the period is a short 7 seconds. It’s not doing anything. The energy is a pathetic 5. That’s a good time to drink coffee, not paddle out.

Monday is more of the same. The 31st sees a light offshore north breeze in the morning, which will clean up any of that bump, but there’s still only 0.3ft of surf. The swell period bumps to 8 seconds but there's just nothing behind it. The energy is a weak 2. It’s a pretty lake out there.

Tuesday the 1st and Wednesday the 2nd are not looking any better. We get a tiny pulse of 1.6ft from the south, but the period drops to an awful 4 seconds. That's just windslop. The energy creeps up to 16, but it's all short-period junk. On top of that, we have cross-onshore breezes and a risk of thunderstorms, so it's likely to be a messy, bumpy, and just generally soggy couple of days. Not worth the drive.

The rest of the first week and into the second week is more of the same. From Thursday the 3rd right on through to Monday the 7th, we’re looking at 0.3ft to 1.3ft waves with periods of 4, maybe 6 seconds. The energy is almost always in the low single digits. It’s essentially flat.

Then we get a little something to talk about, but don’t get your hopes up. On the morning of Wednesday the 9th of September, the swell jumps to a whopping 3.3ft from the south, with a period of 5 seconds. That’s the biggest and most energetic swell of the whole forecast, with a combined energy of 87. It’s still short-period, but it’s something. The problem? There's a fresh, cross-onshore wind blowing at 16 mph, with a risk of thunderstorms. It’s going to be choppy, lumpy, and probably a bit of a mess. The afternoon is similar, with the wind picking up to 19 mph and energy dropping to 45.

Thursday and Friday (the 10th and 11th) keep a bit of that southwest/south energy, with 2ft to 2.3ft waves. The wind eases a bit, but the period stays in the 5-6 second range. It’s still poor.

The final stretch, from the 12th to the 14th, just fades back to that sub-1.6ft mush. The wind stays mostly onshore or cross-onshore, and the energy is right back down in the teens. It's a pretty grim outlook, to be honest.

So, bottom line? The 9th is the only day that might even have rideable waves, but the wind will be ruining the surface. For anyone else, this looks more like a kiteboarding window on the 9th, with that bumpy, 3.3ft, onshore wind swell, than a surf window. There are no standouts in this whole 16-day forecast. The whole run is looking pretty sad, which can happen in this area. But I know how it goes here, and it tends not to stay poor for long. We’ll just have to wait for those forecasts to change.

Stay tuned, and we'll see what the ocean decides to send us.

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