36th Street Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Right, let’s have a look at what’s doing for the next couple of weeks.

Straight up, I’m gonna be honest with ya – it’s a tough stretch. We’re looking at a solid two-week run of hardly anything worth paddling out for. The first real session that might get your heart rate up doesn’t even show up until the 20th of September, and even then, it’s a bit of a mess.

The only spot the models are even bothering to talk about is 36th Street, a beach/jetty setup that’s fairly exposed. The water is running at 78°F right now, which is a whopping 6°F warmer than normal for this time of year – that’s a seriously weird anomaly, feels more like a bath than the ocean.

For the first week and a half, it’s a write-off. Swell is tiny, mostly under 2ft, and the period is all over the place, but mostly short and weak. The combined wave energy is consistently in the low double digits (e.g. 26, 32, 9), which is just plain weak. We’ve got a few mornings with clean, offshore winds from the NW and WNW, but there’s just no swell to work with.

Come Thursday the 10th, there’s a tiny bump in the afternoon – 3ft of S swell, 6-second period, and the energy climbs to 66 (moderate). Winds are clean off the W, but the comment says “surfable waves but very ordinary conditions.” That’s about as good as it gets in this window, and it’s still not great.

The only real standout – and I’m using that word loosely – is on the 20th of September. The Sunday afternoon sees a jump to 4ft of S swell, period still short at 5 seconds, but the energy climbs to 96 (moderate). It’s choppy with a cross-onshore S wind at 16 mph, so it’ll be lumpy, but if you’re desperate, that’s the one day where the swell size is actually something to work with. For a beginner, 4ft is fine, but it’s not clean.

After that, the 21st brings a little relief with a clean NW offshore wind in the morning, but the swell drops back to 1ft. The energy is down to 30.

In short, if you’ve got a kite, you might get more out of the windy afternoons than a paddle surfer will. The blank run is long, but that’s not unusual for this area when the conditions line up like this. Keep an eye on the forecasts – it tends not to stay this flat forever.

Rusty.

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