Finisterre Surf Forecast

Monday 30th April @ 0830. Surf forecast window 30th-3rd May 2007

Small and clean surf for most of the week, with moderate E/NE winds and good weather all the way.

High (1031mb) over Northern Scotland drifts slowly South. Low (1000mb) off SW UK moves SE, filling as it does. New high (1024mb) forms mid Atlantic. New low (996mb) off Newfoundland forms by end of week and moves East towards UK by end of week.

Beauty weekend down here last weekend with 2-3ft of clean swell all the way and good weather to boot. There are good banks shaping up all over the place. Now not such a fine day - bit cloudy this morning, but still gentle East wind and 2ft of swell making it in against the offshores. Should get good again on the push. Tomorrow sees the swell increase slightly to around 2ft+ mark for the North Coast - quite a strong east wind on things, so may weaken the swell size a bit. Wednesday back to a clean 1ft for the North Coast. Thursday should see a new pulse of swell - only 2-3ft for the North Coast, but again clean in the east wind and should be some good sessions about. Friday back to 0-1ft - still clean for the North Coast. So not a massive week, but should be plenty of small and clean waves about with odd 2ft+ pulses. Keep an eye out for the tidal push to jump things up a bit. Weekend (Sat pm) is looking like more of a long distance W groundswell about, but could see some SW winds - maybe time for that first onshore bowly session of the summer…only just May and already feeling pretty warm. Could be a scorcher.

Low tides ~ 11.30am/pm. Moving to springs.

The latest on the saga is that Professor Kerry Black has published his much awaited independent report on the mooted Wave Hub Scheme off Hayle. Concern has been thrown up about the likliehood and size of any wave shadow on beaches from Portreath - St Agnes as a result of the scheme. Original worse case scenario predictions were a reduction in wave size of 13%. You can read our stance on the matter in an earlier blog.

It seems that the conclusion from the report is that ‘The wave height absorption is dependent on the number of devices connected, but the maximum absorption is highly unlikely to exceed 20% of wave height, assuming a 100% absorption, which is considered to be impractical. As such, the likely maximum impact on wave height at the shoreline is a maximum of 3-6%’.

So the best course of action would seem (in the face of insanely complicated wave dynamics) to be a piecemeal implementation with close ‘adaptive monitoring’.

Read the report in full at

http://www.a1surf.com/acrobat/WaveHubReport.pdf

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