Tropical Storm Elida – Update

Not much has changed in the short-range portion of the forecast for TS Elida.

She is still strengthening, she will still likely become a hurricane tomorrow, and she is still tracking out W around 14-16 knots.

As of this evening Elida does look like she make it into the SoCal swell window with a little more intensity than it looked like in previous forecasts. If this lives up to be the case then we may see a little bit of tropical swell as we head toward the end of next week…likely on Thursday or Friday.

It still doesn’t look like it will be a significant swell, maybe chest-high the top SSE spots…but these new tropical waves will be mixing with a stronger and more dominant S swell coming from the Southern Hemisphere, so then could ad some extra “pop” to the surf as we head into the weekend.

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.