Hurricane Swell

Today is Friday and as I write this, Hurricane Delta is bearing down on the Louisiana coast. My prayers are with those who are being affected by yet another storm in the same general area where Hurricane Laura hit less than one month ago. I pray that there is no loss of life, and that the property damage is minimal. Just a few minutes ago my daughter-in-law texted me a picture of her fence that blew down, and they live in Chambers County. We are experiencing forty mile per hour gusts, but only a few branches have fallen in the yard. Being on the backside of a hurricane and a few hundred miles away has kept us from the fury of wind and rain more than once in my life. Living on the coast forces us to take the good weather events with the bad. Hurricanes are something we will always have to deal with.

One of the positive things for surfers about being on the dry side of a hurricane is the fact that you get the swell created by a hurricane and the counter clockwise winds create an offshore flow which holds up the waves and gives them good form. I have chased hurricane swell all my life from Galveston to South Padre Island. The best waves on the Texas coast are usually swells created by tropical systems. At some point during a hurricane swell, you get a longer period swell. This means that there is usually a longer lull between waves. A taller wave height (4-6 ft) with a longer period between them (10-15 seconds) combined with moderate offshore winds to groom the face of the wave is what every surfer on the Texas coast dreams about.

Wednesday I checked the cams in Galveston and noticed some lines coming in from the southeast. The buoys were reading approximately 4 feet at 6 second intervals. I loaded up my board and drove the 40 minute trip to the seawall. The surf was about waist high on sets, and I was able to find some fun waves with some friends next to a pier.

The next day, Thursday, the swell was starting to show from Hurricane Delta, and the northeast wind was creating a strong current going into the pier. I decided to tuck behind one of the jetties on the seawall and surfed for about two hours. When I got out, I drove back to the pier to find a much bigger swell and many more surfers taking advantage of the swell filling in. I took out my camera and shot some pics primarily of the short boarders having fun on the best part of the sandbar.

Here are a few of the pics from that Thursday in Galveston.