La Jolla conditions
La Jolla visibility today: the good swell showed up early, the chop didn't leave
The swell we said to watch for Sunday rolled in Saturday. The grade didn't move.
La Jolla visibility today, Saturday, Oct. 24: the Dive Pro beta model says C. That's 10 to 14 feet, medium confidence. The C gets a little under half the odds, a D gets a bit under three in ten, and a B gets about one in four.
Yesterday we said a longer-period swell would show up Sunday. It came early. This morning's run has about 2.2 feet at 12.6 seconds out of the south-southwest. Quick refresher: period is the gap in seconds between waves. Twelve seconds means it was made by a storm a long way off, and it arrives as clean, organized lines instead of a pile of bumps.
So why is it still a C? Because that clean swell is the backup singer. The main swell is about 3.7 feet at 5 seconds out of the west. That's local, short, stacked stuff, the same chop that knocked us off the B streak Friday. Waves five seconds apart keep stirring the sand before it can settle. The model's surf number is about 4.5 feet, and its own notes flag the elevated surf as the thing that can cloud up the shallows.
The good news is the model also lists the longer-period swell as a positive. It's easier to time a dive around organized sets than around chop. That's the honest version: one thing helping, one thing hurting, and the hurting one is bigger today.
Wind is close to a nonfactor. The model keeps it under about 9 miles an hour all day, gusts near 10, out of the west-northwest.
The tide is the bigger story for timing. High of about 5.7 feet around 8 a.m., then a long slide to a low near 0.1 feet at 2:47 p.m. That's a swing of more than five and a half feet. The model treats the falling tide as a negative, since outgoing water is less likely to push cleaner offshore water toward the beach. Get in early, near the high, and be out before lunch.
Water is still warm. The nearshore buoy off Scripps read 72.9 degrees, which is a lot of late October to be diving without a hood.
On bacteria, as of Friday morning's County beach list, La Jolla Cove was still under the advisory it has carried since Sept. 29, and Children's Pool has its usual long-running one. The La Jolla Shores stations and WindanSea were open.
The Scripps Pier camera's latest frame is from Friday evening. It only shoots around midday and late afternoon, so a morning picture from yesterday is normal. The automatic camera grade didn't post again, so today's call is the model on its own.
Looking ahead, the model holds C through Friday, then has a B with medium confidence on Halloween. That's one day in a ten-day run, so treat it as odds, not a plan. Beta model, not a promise.