Monday Updated Weekly Outlook WFL below…

Monday 7/7 WFL WX Blog: Stop me if you heard this before, but I grew up in Seminole 2 miles from the beach and when I started surfing, I became completely obsessed with it. But the problem was I lived in a place that was almost always flat. I was already interested in the weather so just transitioning to finding out when waves would happen came pretty natural for me so here’s how I did it back in the day. Number one: There was the St. Petersburg Times weather section, it had a little black-and-white map showing cold fronts. This came out every day you spent $.25 and got the newspaper and you could see where the cold fronts were advancing across the US. That newspaper also contained a NWS marine forecast, which would tell you the winds in the cold fronts that were coming. That was our bread and butter surf in WFL… This would clue you in to whether the front had NW winds or N winds- if it was 15knts or 20 maybe even 30 for a very strong front… 2. Dick Fletcher and Roy Leep both came on at exactly 6:15 every night and they could let you in on what the marine conditions would be like and that’s how we did it… Sometime in the early 90s maybe sooner than that I got turned on to NOAA weather radio, which gave buoy reports… That helped a lot for hurricanes but this was before wave models… At some point in the 90s or right around 2000 NOAA Polar Wavewatch III came out and that was my bread and butter wave model for 15 years, it was very detailed for WFL and highly accurate. This brings us to the current state where every year models were getting better and better, more and more data being pushed into them, more accuracy farther out with storms like Irma, Maria, Ivan, even last year Milton and Helene- you know check those details down to last minute which brings us to now and some of the information is already missing and I’ve noticed over the last two months beyond 72 hours the American model, the GFS, which was the gold standard- literally the mother of the wave models and usually highly accurate has been missing the forecast a bit… It’s just not as accurate as it used to be. For example Chantal was originally forecast to form in the gulf that didn’t happen. The flow around that trough turned out to be a bit stronger than what was forecast also… In conclusion- It just feels like we’re gonna go back to the dark ages. The viral video going around is the Meteo Morales talking about Dorian- I remember Dorian as maybe the worst hurricane ever! I mean imagine a cat 5 sitting on top of your island for five days. It was absolutely horrifying. Maybe it did not crush the headlines because it was a tiny island in the Bahamas (Freeport)… In that video, he’s talking about how the hurricane was going to stop and make a right before it hit the Florida Peninsula, which was heavily populated so that was important information. I guess the point is if that happens again this year, are we gonna know it’s going to turn or are 5 million people going to try to evacuate all at the same time? Personally, I’m prepared to go more by my gut and climatology rather than rely strictly on the models especially beyond 72 to 120 hours when they’ve been especially flaky so let’s see how it goes but it seems really dumb to cut off our forecasting models or take away data that could save lives…
About the pic below: This would’ve been TS Bonnie at the end of June 1986, kind of a classic 25/85 storm that moved to LA and eventually became a hurricane before landfall. I remember bc I was 16 this summer and taking driver’s ed at PPHS… Bonnie had kicked back a small 1 day SSW swell from 25/85… AMI must have been a couple feet bigger than this wave in Pinellas. This was not a great surf spot but it was close to home, we rode our bikes to surf this… We would have seen Bonnie on the news and rode our bikes with our boards hoping for surf and lucking out even with these tiny waves. I think if I remember correctly this was the only swell we got that summer besides some trough waves at one point… 2 swells the whole summer… We were hyped for Bonnie bc 1985 was so good. 1985 had hurricane swells every month of the season and being teenagers new to surfing we thought every summer was like 1985. But 1986 was the yin to 1985’s yang. 6 named storms, very slow and most of the storm names that year went unused. Funny to remember, so much nostalgia- I know we were playing INXS ‘Listen like thieves’ until the cassette player burned up! I’m riding a 5’8 Fox Wave Weapon shaped by Greg Loeher…
Sunday 7/6/25 WFL Weekly Outlook: I hope your having a fun weekend! Waves are tiny but maybe a 1ft for your grom. This week looks totally calm with light and variable flow, SW tomorrow but not very strong… Towards mid July and later the pattern may open up for some south flow and tropical WX but right now this week looks like very light an variable flow and no waves. I hope you got some fun ones last week! Seemed like a little more than forecast at the right time and tide. Glad you got some waves! Site Note: WFL Wave WX forecast updated every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, more often and every day when waves are happening.

Details by Diaco updated for 7/6 Next WFL waves… best random guess: After mid-July later next week from possible south flow.

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