Lajinha Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, talkin' to ya from Lajinha. I’m Rusty, and I’ve been lookin' at the charts for the next couple of weeks. Gotta be straight with ya, it’s a rough outlook. We’re lookin' at a long stretch of noisy, onshore slop. There’s no real stand-out session in the whole 16 days. The swell energy is mostly weak to moderate, with a couple of days where it gets a bit more grunty, but the wind just ruins it every time. The water temp is runnin’ about average for this time of year, so nothin' wild there.

We start off on Monday the 14th with a bit of swell from the ESE, around 3 ft and a short period of 8 seconds with weak energy (151). It sounds small, but that cross-shore wind is already stirrin' up a chop. It’s just messy. That theme carries through the whole week and into the next. The wind is almost always out of the ESE or SE, blowin’ cross or cross-on, and it’s a moderate breeze most days, occasionally pickin' up to a fresh breeze around the 18th and 21st. The waves themselves, when they’re there, are in the 3 ft to 4 ft range, but with a short period around 6 to 8 seconds, so it’s just weak, bumpy stuff. The combined energy even gets up to the 200s on a few days like the 19th (227) and 22nd (255), but that’s all energy from the wind, not clean groundswell. The conditions are just repeatedly “poor,” with heavy cross-on chop. By the 24th, the swell size drops right off.

Later in the run, on the 27th and 28th of September, there’s a bump in swell height to about 4 ft from the ENE with the combined energy hittin’ 196 to 217, but the story is the same: it’s all cross-on shore wind. The only day the wind looks like it turns truly offshore from the east is the morning of the 26th, but even then the data says the surf conditions are poor. Sometimes a straight offshore wind on a beach break with that short, weak swell can still just be a washing machine. It’s just not on.

For a reef break like Lajinha that’s consistent and exposed, it’s a damn shame to see the wind so stubborn. Even the longer period swell that shows up on the 24th and 25th (10-11 seconds) is comin' from the wrong angle with too much wind on top.

Honestly, this is a rough 16-day window. There’s not a single session I’d paddle out for. The wind is the enemy on this one. Keep an eye on it, though – forecasts can flip.

- Rusty

Read more