Finisterre Surf Forecast Wednesday 8th May @ 1800. Forecast window 8-12th May 2012

Finally a few waves this week, bit of onshore, but way better than it has been of late. Getting more settled weather by the weekend.

Synoptic situation – Low (994mb) Bay of Biscay moves North, deepening for a time. High (1030mb) builds near Atlantic and moves over the UK by the weekend.

Just got out of a super fun 3ft at the open beaches – gentle SW wind on it and although it was nothing special, was good fun and enjoyed being in. Starting to shed the neoprene as well! So we’ll see some fun waves over te next few days, quite a southerly swell with a moderate SSW/S wind – shortish fetch, so not too long a period, but think tomorrow and Thursday could be fun days on the North Coast – 3ft+ on Wednesday and then a bit bigger on Thursday 4ft. Wind veers NW/N by Friday as the low heads over, so think the South Coast will be worth a look, especially with the swell direction. Into the weekend and we have high pressure moving in, so better weather but not loads of swell on, so make the most of the next few days.

Low tides 2am/2pm, moving off spring

Come and visit us at our new shop, check the finisterre website for details.

SINCE FEBRUARY 2003….

My first ever forecast was back in February 2003 when it was one of the 3 pages of our website – in my bedroom above the surf shop in Aggie. I update it (when I can!) Monday and Thursday am. I feel proud that it’s still part of the brand today.

It mainly focuses on the SW and won’t tell you to go this or that beach at this or that time. It’s more of a general overview of how I think things will pan out over the outlook period and what that means for us surfers on these shores…sometimes it’s awesome and sometimes it sucks, but often just good to get in.

There’s a bunch of links below that I find most useful. For me, reading the pressure charts has always been step 1 – goes back to the old days when all you had was the weather after the BBC news to make the call about a trip. That was 4 seconds you had to see what kind of systems were heading our way, before Michael Fish got in the way! You had to really understand and read the charts. In fact, our first advert was a met office chart for the best surf conditions for the South West UK. I went to the Met Office and scanned through 10 years of archive charts to find this one! The whole thinking was that if you knew charts and understood what this meant, you’d get the ad and get the commitment behind Finisterre and what it is we do.

In this day and age where there is so much info out there, the best swells are still the unexpected ones….every now and then they’ll sneak in and catch everyone off guard….

Best for wavebuoys

Windguru – this is the one that updates live

Best for charts, making your own wind readings and swell orientation

Met office charts

Good friend Des at Constantine Bay does the best daily report that I know….