Hurricane Elida - Sending waves for Baja and slowly reaching the SoCal Swell Window

Elida jumped to Category 1 Hurricane Strength last night and has held that level of intensity for most of the day. She has been in a good position to send swell to Baja Sur, in particular to Cabo and the East Cape...but not so much on the Pacific Side of Baja (yet, it is only a matter of time at this point).

Currently she is moving WNW (295-degrees) at about 12 knots, which means she has slowed down a touch and is giving herself a more time to churn out swell...

(remember that for all storms, and tropical systems in particular because of their smaller fetch, that the time that a storm's fetch spends over a patch water is as important as the movement track and the storm's intensity...if the storm is moving too fast the fetch has a limited amount of time to generate swell before it moves off to new water, expending its time/energy creating new favorable sea-state, rather than pure swell. Ideally you would want the storm to either move slowly toward you, or stay in place....check out the hurricane surf post I did at the beginning of the season for more details.)

Anyway at this point Elida is right on the edge of the SoCal Swell Window...at her current speed and track she is likely to reach it later tonight or early tomorrow...but really the swell producing portions of the storm won't fully move into our window until Tuesday-midmorning.

She isn't the largest storm either...current estimates only have her tropical storm strength winds extending out about 75 nautical miles from the core...and the majority of those in the NE quadrant.

Basically what this means is that currently she is not the greatest swell producer...Baja Sur (IE Cabo and the Tip) will do ok with overhead+ surf due to the track and positioning of the storm as it came together.

By the time it reaches the SoCal swell window it will begin to lose some steam as well as take a more westerly track. I am expecting some shoulder high surf at the standout SE facing spots, basically North Orange County, later on Thursday and into Friday. Since this will be mixing with a building S-SW swell it is going to be hard to tell the difference.

Here are a few images that I pulled on this storm.

This is from the Naval Research Laboratory



Here is a satellite image of the storm




And finally here is a image from the NHC...check out the next new tropical disturbance forming near Guatemala.

Tropical Storm Elida

Tropical Storm Elida formed just off the southern coasts of Mainland Mexico early on Saturday.

Elida jumped from a tropical disturbance to Tropical Storm strength in less than 12 hours and current NHC forecasts are showing that she may reach hurricane wind speeds by early next week (probably late on Monday). Currently Elida is tracking WNW at about 18 knots and has just started to move into the Tip of Baja’s swell window. Forecasts are calling for a slight shift to a more WNW’erly angle over the next day or so (300-degree track instead of a 290-295 degree one), which will be better for swell production for Baja.

Unfortunately it looks like Elida is going to hit cooler water and start and more westerly storm track before it gets to the Southern California swell window. The fact that it be losing intensity, taking a more oblique track, and is still forecast to be moving at nearly 15-18 knots is really going to hamper its ability to send swell our direction.

Check out the latest forecast track from NHC



When you get down to brass tacks from a surf perspective Cabo and the East Cape down in Baja will get some swell from Elida…likely it will be in the overhead range, (and maybe bigger) if the storm can intensify and slow down its movement westward. I would expect swell to begin showing on Monday (July 14th) strengthening through the day and then peaking on Tuesday and maybe into Wednesday before dropping off. I am not sure if it is really worth a trip down there unless you have some disposable income to burn, since it is still a roll-of-the-dice that the storm will get stronger and have a chance to generate much of a swell.

For SoCal, at this point, I am not expecting much from Elida. We may see some background SE energy from her if she can hang on long enough to make it to our swell window. Likely anything she produces will get lost in building swell that we have arriving from the Southern Hemisphere later next week.

If something changes for SoCal I will definitely let you guys know.