South Del Mar Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, Rusty here. Let's get into it.

Alright, lookin' at the next 16 days for South Del Mar, and I gotta be straight with ya – it's a bit of a mixed bag. We've got some decent long-period groundswell sneaking in, but the wind and conditions are gonna fight us a lot of the time. The first real sniff of something half-decent is Monday the 13th, so don't get your hopes up for the opening week.

The water's sitting at 70° – that's *much* warmer than usual for this time of year, feels like a bath out there.

So, Tuesday the 7th kicks off with a little 3ft SSW swell, period at 18 seconds – proper long-period groundswell with moderate to strong energy (852). But that WNW wind at 9 mph is straight onshore. It's a write-off.

Wednesday the 8th and Thursday the 9th are much the same story. A touch more swell height, around 4ft to 3ft, but the wind's a cross-onshore mess. It’s gonna be choppy and bumpy. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Friday the 10th through Sunday the 12th? Just forget it. The wind's up, the swell's a bit smaller and the consistent cross-onshore wind is just ripping the surface apart. Poor conditions.

Now, Monday morning the 13th is our first real moment of hope. It's not gonna be big – just 3ft of that SSW swell (346) – but for a few hours we get glassy conditions. That's the word. No wind. For a reef break like South Del Mar that's fairly consistent and exposed to the WSW swell direction, perfectly clean tiny waves for a beginner are on the cards. It won't last – that afternoon we're straight back into onshore junk.

From Tuesday the 14th right through Friday the 17th, the swell just drops off a cliff. We're talking 1ft to 2ft swell. Sure, the period is long (16-19 seconds), but there's hardly any energy (201-516). It's essentially flat.

Skipping ahead... the weekend of Saturday the 18th and Sunday the 19th starts to look a bit more interesting. We get a pulse of SSW swell (3ft to 5ft) with moderate to strong energy (846-1404). But, on Saturday the 18th, we've got a cross-shore wind from the S at 9 mph, and on Sunday the 19th it’s a cross-onshore mess again. It'll be a bit of a letdown.

The best call, if you're desperate, is to keep an eye on that Monday the 13th morning. It’s not a classic, but that glassy window and a long-period groundswell hitting an exposed reef is your only clean chance in the whole outlook. After that, a few marginal windows pop up, but nothing that'll get the heart rate up. For a place like this, a run this patchy is just how it goes sometimes.

Rusty, out.

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