Surfing Holidays to France and South Africa
Posts tagged weather
Offshore winds in Newquay!!!
01 year ago
Well we are not excactly expecting to surf like this today but we have at last some offshore winds!! This means clean surf!! We’ve had such a run of onshores we’ve forgotten what real lines look like!!
As you probably know the weather affects the surf, and what we hanker after is light or offshore winds and some nice groundswell coming from a weather system far enough away not to ruin the surf! This all sounds a bit geeky, and if you’d like to know more geeky stuff we’ve blogged about surfing and the weather and you can read about it under our ‘general interest surfing’ category.
I’m sure all the Newquay surfers will be out today too so we will hopefully see some friends getting some good waves in the sea later on.
Mixed weather and surf, but conditions improving
02 years ago
Well we have had a few mixed days of surf and weather so far in Morocco.
The weather has been more unsettled than usual for this part of Morocco, with some heavy rain around Christmas and more wind than usual.
The reason for this less settled weather down here and indeed the cold weather in the UK has been caused by the position of a large blocking high-pressure system over the North Atlantic and Greenland.
This has prevented the usual flow of wet and milder weather from the West and South West, and has allowed cold air to be drawn into the UK from the North and East. The air coming from over the Atlantic sea is warmer than the air coming from the lands to the East and North of the UK because the sea is warmer than the land.
These areas of high pressure can be quite difficult to move and can dominate the weather for a week or two, before eventually being bumped out of the way by continuos low-pressure systems.
It looks like the high pressure is starting to move over the UK over the next few days, keeping the UK cold, but hopefully will recede into Europe after that and allow the milder Atlantic air in.
And down here in Morocco the more unsettled weather has been caused by the same high pressure system pushing the low-pressure systems further South below the high.
The good news is that as the high pressure to the north moves east and declines, then the weather and surf here in Morocco where we are based will be much better.
The seven day surf and weather forecast is showing more settled conditions for next week, with light winds and sunshine, and with water temps around 19C there should be some lovely surf around.
Looking forward to seeing you out here.
What makes waves?
02 years ago
In the first of our series of articles about how the weather affects surfing, we look at what causes our swell in the South West of Britain;
Low pressure systems
As you know the UK is situated on the Eastern side of the North Atlantic Ocean. Out at sea there is a lot of activity in the weather. Understanding how the weather works will help you see how waves are formed.
Our UK waves are formed by low pressure systems. To find out about low pressure systems and how they are created, we need to first consider what is happening to air pressure across the world.
No prizes for guessing that the equator is hotter than the rest of the planet, so we can also guess that over the equator the air is heated. This air rises, and is replaced by cooler air from the poles. These pockets of air are called ‘highs’ and ‘ lows’.
Low pressure areas suck in air from hotter areas. When a pocket of warm and cooler air meet the hot air passes over the top, which lowers the pressure, and makes the air spin. Low pressures spin anti-clockwise and highs clockwise. As you can imagine, in winter, when the difference in temperatures is greater, these low pressures are more dynamic and the air spins faster.
In the Atlantic the pattern we see is a low pressure system predominantly coming from the South West heading North East for our Western coastline. Why does it go this way? Well, its all down to the jet-stream. This is the name for the flow of air at high levels in the atmosphere. The jet stream travels faster than the air lower down in our atmosphere, where the highs and lows are moving. The jet stream moves West to East around the world. This movement is caused by the rotation of the Earth. It can be pushed North or South, and can be stronger or weaker, depending on the other weather systems it comes into contact with. Some scientists have said that with climate change these jet streams are being pushed further towards the polar regions.
These highs and lows are often depicted on TV weather charts called ‘synoptic charts’. (We’ll look at these in more detail later in our series.)
So next time you tune in see if you can spot one, and predict which way it is heading!
In our next article we will look at what these low pressure systems are doing to the surface of the ocean.
The girls at play
03 years ago
The surf and weather has settled into a nice pattern, with small to medium size cleen swell and warm sunny days.
