La Jolla visibility today: C, go before the wind

Pull into the Cove lot and the water looks like a regular Tuesday. Not green glass. Not milk. The Dive Pro beta model calls visibility 10 to 14 feet and stamps it a C. Ten to fourteen feet means you can see your buddy and the kelp. You cannot see the far reef from the stairs. That's the middle of the scale. You can dive it.

The model is not confident, and the odds show it. C is about 44 percent. The file says 0.4397, which is 44 percent once you stop staring at the decimals. F is 20.7 percent, B is 18.4, D is 16.9. That's the pick. It is not a lock.

Surf is 4.33 feet. Call it about 4.3. The primary swell is 3.28 feet out of the south-southwest, which is about 3.3, with 11.3 seconds between waves. 11.3 seconds is a gap you can use. You watch a set, you wait, you go. Then the short one: a wind wave at 1.51 feet every 2.65 seconds. That is not a swell. That is the surface jiggling, and jiggling lifts sand in the shallows. Elevated surf stirs the shallows. If you want the better half of 10 to 14, stay off the skinny sand.

The wind is the clock. The hourly forecast has 1.6 mph at 6 AM, 2.0 at 7, 1.8 at 8. By 9 it's 4.9. At 10 it's 6.2, at 11 it's 5.6. Then it climbs. At 3 PM the number is 13.1 mph, and the gusts top out at 16.8. Thirteen miles an hour puts a texture on the surface. That's the other risk the model lists. Afternoon wind textures the surface. Best window is early to late morning, before the wind builds.

Tide runs on a different schedule. Morning high slack is around 5:22 AM, and the hourly height at 5 AM is 4.58 feet. It drops to 2.0 feet at 11 AM, low slack around 11:04 AM. After that it rises toward a high at 4:42 PM, also 4.58 feet. The model's own note treats that rise as a plus, cleaner water sliding in on the way up. The rise and the wind share the afternoon. Morning is the light air, even while the tide is still falling off the dawn high.

The camera does not get a vote. Recent Scripps captures have had grading failures. The one on file is Monday at 2:21 PM, and the visibility grade is empty. No camera-derived number today.

This is a beta model. It has not been validated. It's the guy in the next parking spot who memorized the buoy report. Look at the water yourself.

Check the full La Jolla forecast before you load the car.