Florida Surf Report/Forecast and Tropical Outlook for August 2nd 2024
- August 2, 2024
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- By Story/Photos By SurfGuru
Atlantic Surf Report and Forecast
Friday: Shin to knee high in the better spots at 7-8 sec from the East. Winds will be gentle but onshore picking up in the afternoon.
Weekend: Winds build and shift SE kicking up a lower quality SE wind swell with a small 8 sec background bump filling in a little size for Saturday. Winds build and turn more towards the South for Sunday building size. As the storm passes over on Sunday winds could shift for the afternoon/evening so keep an eye on the winds and cams for an opening.
Looking ahead: The further the storm pushes out into the Atlantic the better our odds will be for cleaner conditions and ridable leftovers on Monday and Tuesday. If it hugs the coast we will see more south winds and wind swell conditions. Don’t get overly excited for big waves though, the wind fields are circulating clockwise away from us and the storm will be pretty close so it’s defiantly not ideal for wave generation but with a little luck we should get something.
South Florida Surf report and Forecast
Friday: Flat.
Weekend: Onshore/South winds kick up chunky wind swell for Saturday. Winds shift south for Sunday with continued wind swell dropping in size a bit.
Looking ahead:
Surf drops off on Monday and then we are back to a small to flat spell for a while.
Gulf Coast Surf report and Forecast
Friday:
Gulfsters: flat
Panhandle: Flat
Weekend:
Gulfsters: Flat though Saturday. Onshore winds pick up on Sunday as Invest AL97 passes over. It’s still somewhat uncertain how strong the winds will be but don’t expect more than a wind swell from high teens onshore winds.
Panhandle: Small to flat for the weekend. It doesn’t look like we will see much interaction from the storm.
Looking ahead:
Gulfsters: Going flat for the start of next week.
Panhandle: Back to small conditions. We may see a little mid week bump but that’s about it.
Tropics and Hurricane Forecast
Invest AL97 is still on track to affect us this weekend, with the most significant impact expected on Sunday and Monday. As mentioned in the Wednesday report, we can anticipate mostly rain and some brisk winds. The models are now more aligned, indicating that the center will pass over Florida near Tampa and then move towards Jacksonville. This path is favorable as it keeps most of the low pressure over land, preventing it from intensifying.
The storm’s trajectory has ended up between the earlier Euro and GFS model predictions, but it appears the Euro model was more accurate for Monday and beyond. The GFS had forecasted the storm would linger in the Gulf, blocked by high pressure, while the Euro predicted a break in the high pressure, allowing the Invest to move north into the Atlantic. I leaned towards the Euro model earlier this week because it seemed to better capture the interaction between the low-pressure wave and the Bermuda high in the Atlantic.
If the storm swings out into the Gulf a little more we can expect Debby to build into a Cat 1 Hurricane before making landfall. This would be a completely different scenario bringing much bigger surf and stronger winds. There is a possibility this would also slow the storm giving it even more time over the warm waters of the Gulf allowing it to stock pile more moisture before reaching land making it far more dangerous. This unfortunately is looking more and more likely as of today.
Overall, we can expect a fair amount of rain and strom surge on Sunday and Monday but things should be back to Normal by Tuesday.
Have a great one and stay safe! - Bryan
*Legal stuff. Just a reminder I’m a surf forecaster not a weather forecaster so please check with the official government storm info outlets for the latest.