La Jolla conditions
La Jolla visibility today, Oct 28: the chop left, the C stayed
Ten to fourteen feet. Cleaner swell, same letter, and a B that's closer than yesterday.
The Dive Pro beta model has La Jolla at a C today, Wednesday, Oct 28. That's 10 to 14 feet of visibility. Same letter as yesterday. Different ocean.
Yesterday's main swell was short wind chop from the west, the kind that stirs sand instead of rolling under you. That's gone. The wind waves are down to about a quarter of a foot. What's left is two south-southwest swells stacked on each other, one about 2.4 feet at roughly 13 seconds and one about 2.1 feet at about 13 seconds. Surf tops out around 3 feet.
Long period swell is cleaner water to dive in. It also has real push. Thirteen seconds means the energy reaches the bottom, so expect surge on the shallow reef and some sand moving around near the sand channels.
The odds tell the story. The model gives C about a 46 percent chance, B about 36 and D about 18. Yesterday B was under 30. So the C is holding, but a B day is a real possibility, not a long shot.
Wind is the easy part. The model has it under 5 mph most of the morning, close to dead calm around 10 AM, then building to about 10 mph near 2 PM. Its best window is early to late morning, before the breeze shows up.
Then the tide. High is around 10:26 AM at about 6.5 feet. After that it drains all the way to a minus 0.8 foot low at 5:51 PM. The model counts a falling tide as a negative, because outgoing water isn't pulling cleaner offshore water into the Cove. Calm wind plus high tide plus morning lands in the same hour. That's your dive.
The water is still warm for late October. The model's estimate is about 76 degrees. The nearshore buoy reads about 73.
Water quality. As of Tuesday the County cleared the rain advisory it put on La Jolla after last week's rain. The Cove still carries the advisory it has had since late September, and Children's Pool is still flagged. Check the County beach water quality map before you go.
Looking ahead, the model has a C every day through Saturday. Sunday, Nov 1 shows a B, but the same forecast also has about 0.9 inch of rain that day. Rain means runoff and County advisories, so plan around the weather, not just the letter.
This is a beta model. It hasn't been validated yet, so treat the grade as odds, not a promise. If you get in, tell us what you actually saw.