The weekend
Weather
Two pristinely sunny days; totally dry and pretty much cloudless on Saturday, then just a few wisps and puffs of white, scattered across the big blue canvas on Sunday. Winds will be moderate force 4 SSE’ly for the most part, perhaps sprucing up to fresh force 5 at times, so there will be a little bit of wind-chill, to take the edge off the 10-11°C max temps.
Surf and the Water
Two classic west-coast surf days, with clean 2-3 foot waves on Saturday, then 4-5 feet on Sunday. The west coast will also be good for swimming, likewise the north, and it will definitely be best to shoot for high tide, when the sea walls/dunes will give a little shelter from the offshore breeze. Those high tides will be 6.8m at 2:45pm on Saturday, then 7.3m at 4:12pm on Sunday.
Monday and Tuesday
Weather
This part of the forecast has taken a bit of a disappointing downturn. We still expect high pressure to be in charge but, with one high centred over Ireland and the other centred over Italy. However, pinched in between these high’s will be an unbudging weather-front, so these two days that were previously expected to be very sunny are now expected to be very wet. It’s very uncertain when on Monday the rain will start and when on Tuesday the rain will stop, but with likely totals of10-20mm there will be some pretty big puddles. The rest of the forecast story hasn’t changed much, with gentle SE’ly winds still expected for the most part, and the temperatures generally peaking at 10-11°C.
Surf and the Water
Two cracking surf days… the waves will be 4-5 feet, perhaps occasionally 6 feet, and super-clean throughout. The tides will be low around late-morning/midday and they will be high shortly before dawn and around dusk; about 8m on Monday and 8.6m on Tuesday.
The Rest of Next Week
Weather
Wednesday will likely be partly wet again, because the weather-front that cleared southwards sometime on Tuesday, will probably swing northwards again, giving our puddles another little top-up before finally dying away to nothing. Thursday and Friday might see a shower or two, but for the majority of the time, it should be dry with either cloudy skies or with hazy sunshine. The winds will be very light E’ly on Wednesday and then moderate N’ly on Thursday and Friday. Those N’ly breezes will bring colder air to the islands, so we will probably see a temperature reduction of about 1 degree per day, such that we only achieve a max of around 8°C on Friday. Furthermore, temperatures will take a tumble any time that the skies are clear overnight, so we could be seeing minima of around 4°C, with ground frost in places.
Surf and the Water
Super clean surf on Wednesday (2-3 feet), then smaller and messier on Thursday and Friday. However, the south coast might be lovely for our winter swimmers on those days, especially with the low spring tides exposing vast swathes of sand in the early afternoons. High water will be in the early mornings; roughly 9.3m on Wednesday, 9.6m on Thursday and 9.7m on Friday.
The next forecast update will be on Sunday evening…
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