Royal Palms State Beach Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright folks, Rusty here. Let’s have a look at what’s cookin' for the next couple of weeks.

Honestly, it’s a real quiet stretch ahead. The swell energy is just barely there, and the wind is almost never on our side. We’re looking at a long, dry run with not much to get excited about. The first sign of anything rideable doesn't even show up until around the 29th of July, and even then, it's a struggle.

Royal Palms State Beach is the only spot in the frame, and it’s a tricky one. It’s a sheltered reef and point setup, so it needs a specific swell direction to work, and it's inconsistent—it rarely breaks. The water temp is about average for this time of year, so no surprises there.

The action starts on Wednesday morning, the 29th of July. We’ve got a 3ft SSW groundswell rolling in with a long 16-second period, carrying moderate wave energy (517). The problem is that SSE wind is blowing cross-on at 9 mph, making it fairly choppy. It’s going to be a bumpy, poor surf. The 29th afternoon improves a little with a 3ft SSW swell and 580 energy, but that WSW wind is straight onshore at 6 mph, making it messy.

Thursday the 30th and Friday the 31st are much the same story. Small 2ft to 3ft SSW swell, long periods (14-16 seconds), but the wind is cross-onshore all day. The energy drops from 364 down to 260. The Friday morning has a tiny bit of hope with a light breeze, but it’s still cross-onshore and bumpy.

Then we hit a proper lull. From Saturday the 1st of August all the way through to Tuesday the 12th of August, the swell drops to a pathetic 1ft to 2ft. The combined energy is mostly weak, sitting between 85 and 274. The period stays long, 12 to 20 seconds, but that’s meaningless when the height is that small. The wind is almost always cross-onshore or onshore, and the report calls it “poor surf conditions” every single day. There’s no standout. No day where you’d say, “Yeah, I’m paddling out.”

The only silver lining is a tiny spike in the period around the 7th of August, with a 19-second groundswell, but the swell height is only 1ft and the wind is rubbish. The energy is still weak (157). Later in the second week, around the 10th and 11th of August, we see the energy start to climb a bit—198, 233—but again, it’s 1ft to 2ft of swell with moderate cross-onshore winds. The setup looks more interesting for a kite surfer than a paddle surfer, to be honest.

There is no single best day. If you had to pick the least terrible window, it would be the very first morning, Wednesday the 29th of July, just because the swell is the biggest at 3ft. But don’t expect much. It's a long, flat spell. The forecasts can always change, but right now, it’s a waiting game.

Rusty.

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