92nd Street Surf Forecast and Surf Report

G’day, Rusty here. Look, I’ve gotta be straight with you: the next sixteen days are looking pretty damn flat for our stretch of coast. There’s nothing on offer that’s going to have you calling in sick for work, and the conditions are mostly going to be a battle with the wind and the chop. The swell window stays weak and confused, and the quality just isn’t there. It’s a real bummer, but that’s the coast for you.

The first real surfable window we see doesn’t even pop up until the 20th. A small 1.0m SSE swell rolls in on Sunday afternoon, but it’s got about as much push as a wet noodle. The wind goes offshore from the NW, which will clean it up, but it’s still pretty grovelly. It’s a wave for a longboard and a whole lot of patience. Before that, from the 16th through the 19th, it’s a write-off. Tiny, weak, and mostly blown out with onshore winds. You’d be fighting for a 0.3m crumble, and it’s not worth the paddle.

The next little blip comes through on the 21st and 22nd, but it’s still mostly poor. Tuesday the 22nd has a bit more energy in the water – the combined energy sits around 118 to 134, which is weak to moderate – but the wind has other ideas, blowing cross-shore and then cross-onshore which just chops it all up. The swell stays under 1.1m at best and it's coming from the east, not the good direction. We do get a small window of calm on Friday the 25th morning with a bit of a cross-off wind, and the 0.8m ESE swell has some shape to it, but it’s still tiny. I'd call that a scratchy, pessimistic surf.

Keep an eye on Sunday the 27th, because it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a standout, and that’s saying something. The morning has that 0.5m ESE swell with the light WNW winds making it glassy. It’s not going to win any awards, but it'll be the cleanest the place will look all week. That’s your one to sneak out for before the wind kicks onshore. After that, the energy tries to pick up a bit at the start of October for the 1st, but it’s still marginal and messy.

The standout in this whole sad story is really the afternoon of the 30th. The swell size bumps to a clean 0.5m, but it’s the 14-second period from the SSE that gets the heart rate up. That’s a long-period groundswell, and at 92nd Street (breakwater), that kind of energy breaks better than the short-period junk we’ve been seeing. The combined energy jumps to 142, which is still only moderate, but the quality is there. The problem is the fresh cross-onshore wind and the lumpy conditions. It’ll be a mess for the kites, to be honest, and for us, it’s going to be sectiony and tough. Not a beginner wave that day, for sure.

It’s grim, I won’t lie. It’s a stretch of no real swell, and the good winds never line up with the good waves. The water is around average for this time of year, so no surprises there. We’re just stuck in a flat, blustery pattern. It doesn’t stay poor forever, though – the models are always changing. But for now, your board stays in the car.

Alright, I’ll catch you in the water.

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