Tengan Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright folks, Rusty here. Let’s talk about what’s happening with the waves over the next couple of weeks.

To be brutally honest, this is a rough run. The entire 16-day window is a write-off for any decent surf. There’s no point in hunting for a standout session because there simply isn’t one. The pattern is dominated by a massive, messy swell that’s way too big and blown out, followed by a long stretch of tiny, weak, and onshore slop.

We kick off on Friday, August 7, with a serious event. A huge 18 ft swell from the NNW is slamming into the coast, but it’s completely unsurfable. The wind is a severe gale from the NW at 47 mph, ripping cross-offshore, and the combined energy is a massive 10881. That’s just dangerous. By the afternoon, the wind swings offshore but remains a full gale at 43 mph, making it impossible to even paddle out. The swell drops to 10 ft, but the conditions are for the most experienced or the foolish.

Everything after that is a slow fade to nothing. Saturday through the following week sees the swell collapse to under 3 ft, with periods that are all over the place—from a long 14-second groundswell on Monday to a short 6-second windswell later on. The wind is relentless, staying cross-shore or cross-onshore, mostly from the SSE, at near-gale or fresh breeze strength. Every day is marked by “poor surf conditions.” The water temperature is a warm 86°F, which is about a touch warmer than normal for this time of year, but you won’t care because you won’t be in the water.

For the second week, from August 17 onward, we get a bit of a reprieve from the wind, but the swell is tiny and weak. The combined energy values are in the low hundreds, and the swell direction is mostly onshore from the east. The waves that do show up are short-period, knee-high dribblers. The wind is light to moderate, but it’s onshore, so the surf is just mushy.

There is one slight glimmer on the afternoon of August 20: a 3 ft swell from the east with a 10-second period, giving a combined energy of 192. The wind is onshore, though, so even that is likely to be bumpy. It’s nothing to get excited about.

This is a classic case of a blank run for this area. When it goes quiet, it can stay quiet for a while. Don’t hold your breath.

Rusty.

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