Autumn, how's it lookin'

[Donweather]

and would you say there have been more swells from the northern quadrant than in typical years?

Nope...if anything, probably a little less as we didn't get many cyclones in the Coral Sea pushing NE swells down. Mainly got bog standard tradewind swell or cyclone swell from the Tropical South Pacific.

[Donweather]

i'm still chasing the report, but found one from Geoscience Australia which suggested the reverse pattern, i.e. more ECLs when there is an El Nino in effect http://www.ga.gov.au/image_cache/GA4206.pdf

That article actually relates the occurence of ECL to a negative SOI which they state is more common in an El Nino year. Interesting to note that the largest occurence of ECLs was back in 78/79, when it was actually more of a neutral/mild El Nino year (and backed up by relatively mild neutral SOI values).....so perhaps the BOM are going with the fact we're heading into a neutral state this coming winter, perhaps they believe neutral conditions spawn more ECL's?

Current SOI's are some of the highest consecutive positive values although it has dropped significantly in the last 3 weeks or so (hence the BOM may be thinking it's going neutral/slightly negative soon during our winter??).

[alakaboo]

Don I believe the original report I've been trying to find said more ECLs were likely in Autumn and early Winter, while La Nina was still in effect.

I was interested in some of the analysis too, it seems some of the larger storms don't match up to the trend. Interested in the on-the-ground observations as well.

Did you at least get swell while on your OS surfari?

[Donweather]

Did you at least get swell while on your OS surfari?

Yep, sure did. Still trying to go through the 13Gb of data (pics and vid) that we took, and with my home computer hard drive just crashing that's gonna delay the process even longer, but here's some tasty treats of what we got.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t-MKAe4Ntk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dPFbz8HsuQ

[oldman]

Same for south coast olds. So much sand. Local lake mouth has closed over twice after being dredged during summer. Beaches are big.

My half baked unscientific guess is that we've had plenty of small (sand building) surf but no serious storm swells for over a year (maybe 2) to hack away at all the build up.

I think I know the lake of which you speak, but probably all of them down there are the same.

Yep, I've been working on the same half-baked theories BD. We got a few good size swells this year, but some were from the nor'east/east, all of them only lasted a couple of days at most and all have had long spells of medium to nothing swells in between. In fact, all of them were from systems that were a fair distance from us as well, so the swell that was hitting us was organised ground swell rather than storm swell chaos.

One beach for example, Lakes Beach up at Toukley. Remembering dates over a period of a few years is always tricky, but I think around the 18 months or maybe 2 years ago it was hacked out clean and there was an overhead to double overhead drop (get out the Iggy scale, stat) from the dunes restoration area to the sand, and then a short walk to the water. On recent trip, the dune levels were covered by the beach sand and it was maybe 70 metres to the water, with a pretty damned straight edge to the banks. Really hard to find an edge to a wave.

The active summer states associated with La Nina tend to lead to more northerly swells, which result in accretion at many NSW beaches (Coffs and south).

Wondering about this too, but nothing to go on except for old geography lessons saying that the storm swells taketh away, and the rolling smaller wave builds up. That is clearly such a ridiculous simplification that I wonder why they even bothered to teach it.

[Donweather]

Well, the banks were fecked at my secret local this morning. Damn shame too as it's been sooooo good for sooooo long with no one on it.

Not looking forward to looknig for a new spot now.

Let's hope it was just the shitty S'ly mid range swell that was in the water this morning, killing all of the pure E'ly groundswell gold that we were searching for.

[alakaboo]

Don, care to send me a PM with the name of your secret local? I thought it was the same as mine, and was hoping to hit it in 3 weeks or so. Would be a pity if it wasn't in good nick.

Olds, it may be simple, but it's not wrong.
I revisited a paper that looked at beach width and rotation relative to the SOI index, an extract is below. If you (or anyone else) are interested in the full paper let me know.

"The analysis of 24 years of monthly beach profile data obtained at Narrabeen Beach, daily ARGUS video images obtained at Palm Beach during the 1997–1999 El Niño/La Niña event, daily mean directional wave data, and SOI data has resulted in: (1) the establishment of definitive links between beach rotation, wave climate, and the SOI, and (2) the development of a conceptual model of beach rotation occurring at embayed beaches along the NSW coast.
During El Niño phases, the northern end of the beach accretes while the southern end erodes resulting in a net clockwise rotation of the beach around its centre. The opposite occurs during La Niña phases resulting in a net anti-clockwise rotation of the beach. The northern end of the beach responds to trend shifts in SOI about three months after the trend shift occurs, while the response of the southern end of the beach lags the SOI trend shifts by upto 1.5 years. The mean shoreline fluctuations occurring during El Niño phases appear to be about 10 m greater than those occurring during La Niña phases. On average, the magnitudes of the beach width variations at the northern and southern ends are similar during both El Niño and La Niña phases.
Waves are predominantly incident from the southeast during both El Niño and La Niña phases. However, wave heights generally increase/decrease with increasing/decreasing SOI. Incident waves become more southerly with decreasing SOI, while they become more northerly with increasing SOI. On average, the number of storms per year doubles from El Niño to La Niña.
Based on the above links between beach width fluctuations, SOI, and incident wave conditions, a conceptual model of beach rotation is presented. The combination of onshore sediment transport due to southeasterly swell waves, southward longshore sediment transport along the northern and central sections of the beach, and offshore sediment transport at the southern end of the beach due to steeper, ENE waves is expected to cause the observed clockwise beach rotation during El Niño phases. The anti-clockwise rotation that occurs during La Niña phases is expected to be caused by the combination of offshore transport due to southeasterly storms, southward longshore transport due to northeasterly waves, and onshore sediment transport due to southeasterly swell waves."

[pridmore]

asking for a secret spot ??? sounds like the work of DonW himself...
I love Atumn been very fun round my neck of the woods, alot of straight banks but a few spots have been absolutely firing for the size ( and barely anyone been surfing these spots ), offshore winds most days....




Swell increasing here today, banks improving, offshores predicted....

[Trev]

Mark.......... Shut Up!

[pridmore]

Yamba is great this time of year

[oldman]

Yamba? That's still in NSW last I heard?

Anyways, Donw, there seems to be a good part of next week with long fetch easterly off the top of this high, with a low way out east giving it a nice little kick.

Are you a little excited by that? Seems a better arrangement than what you were happy with last week.

Your thoughts????

[Trev]

Yamba? That's still in NSW last I heard?

Haven't you heard?

There's a move to cecede - everywhere north of Port Macquarie.

I'll be called Merkinstate.

[alakaboo]

asking for a secret spot ???

I didn't ask for it to be broadcast, I wanted a recent bank update on a place I'd surfed at least once a week for 5+ years.

I thought it was the same as mine, and was hoping to hit it in 3 weeks or so. Would be a pity if it wasn't in good nick.

[Donweather]

Anyways, Donw, there seems to be a good part of next week with long fetch easterly off the top of this high, with a low way out east giving it a nice little kick.

Are you a little excited by that? Seems a better arrangement than what you were happy with last week.

Your thoughts????

Yeah looks OK....biggest issue at the moment is the bank situation along the entire SE Qld coastline so for me, I'm trying to suss that out before I get too excited about any swell, even from the east. But don't get me wrong, it's nice to see a few last hurrahs from the east before all eyes face south for the winter.

[Donweather]

Gonna give my secret spot one last chance to grace itself this weekend with a better, peakier tradewind swell and an incoming tide (with very little run in the tide).

I have my own little theory on the current bank situation in SE Qld. The banks appear to be facing/tending more SE in direction as when the swell is more from an E'ly direction we appear to get some reasonable quality lefthanders. Whereas when the swell is from the south, the waves appear to shut down a lot more.

Of course this could also be a function of the swell period as we typically get much larger swell periods from the south as opposed to the east.

Let's see what the weekend and Huey delivers!!!

[pridmore]

not the case up ths way DW, banks are much better than they have been, they like the south swell much more than the east, when it was direct east, we had to surf high tide, but as you know they are always changing and thankfully, they are changing for the better round these parts....was a shame to have 7 days straight of 2-3ft and offshore winds and not much in the way of shapely banks, but there was the odd one , the points had fun small waves as the swell angle suited them and winds were great but no banks on beachies meant crowded small point waves...Autumn been small but fun so far and looks like continuing.....

[alakaboo]

I reckon coffee rock and refraction are key Don.

[mattsphat]

Any long range predictions on what the winter season could hold for SE QLD this year?