The Fall

The forecast charts are drifting into the Autumn. Where did the summer go? The summer's been dominated by whole series of charts with low pressure just that little bit to close to Cornwall, leaving us with odds and sods and very few "proper" swells.

As we slip towards darker nights, the forecast charts are offering up a lot more of the same, with a real reluctance of any kind of blocking high developing, to keep the wind south-easterly. There's lows out there this week and over the weekend, but they are mobile and too close to produce more than a short offshore window so timing is everything.
Best times at the moment, look like being Fri evening and maybe again on Monday as the wind backs south or south-east ahead of the next batch of sh!t weather.

Fri eve

Mon

And its all been quiet on the hurricane side of things too. Nothing of major interest has come our way yet, but Gordon, http://www.weathercast.co.uk/tropical-storms/storm/2012-al8.html will waft some not very interesting long period stuff our way towards the end of today. If you can find anywhere on the south coast that is offshore in a westerly wind you might get lucky.

a

Heavy rain.

Not a very nice morning down west, with all the rain, no doubt lots of sewage will be pumping out into the sea as we speak.
The forecasts charts brings some sunshine to the heart however.

This latest low is sitting a notch or two further west than most of the lows we've had this summer and that means swell and more importantly winds from a more southerly direction(yesterday being a classic example).

I'm hopeful that Friday afternoon, right through Saturday and maybe even Sunday morning the wind will stay southerly. It never quite backs to south-easterly and it'll be rather strong at times but a solid size should mean it'll be a laugh.

promise of some decent waves

Wobbly waves over the weekend - as expected, last week's low out to the west of Ireland has faded and merged into a flabby, unstructured brute which cause headaches for the mop up crews again today I suspect. Waves went from quite chunky on friday night to a foot or so by yesterday afternoon. It did it's best to clean itself up a couple of times, most noticeably on friday evening. Found some so so ones up around Boobies, but nothing spectacular.

There's a disturbance off the southern tip of Greenland now...

...which should fire some proper swell our way by midweek. Wednesday night is when the new swell will appear and hopefully it will last through Thursday.

Winds will be light and the sun out on both Wed and Thu, so there'll be a pretty decent sea breeze kicking in, which of course will junk it up - timing will be crucial.

Big up Bradley Wiggins

This is slightly off topic but...

A fine day was had by all yesterday at Hampton Court watching the pedallers pedal. Here's Wiggo powering over the bridge...

... and going by, sideburners ruffling in the wind...

And here is is going past with 150m to go -

the dog has been practicing for the high jump too...

Slug-time

We are back in another run of about-as-bad-as-it gets weather charts. The upper trough is back, exactly the same one as before, parked up just to the west of Ireland with a surface low feeding in westerly winds and cool damp weather.

The low is cradled in there like an egg superglued into an eggcup, right slap bang in the worst place it could be.

the slugs in the garden pissed off for a while but they are now back greasing up and down the veg patch.

My advice would be to head for the west coast of Portugal and hope the nortada or what ever it is called isn't too strong, because there ain't going to be waves here for at least a week.

Sunshine clings on

Mmm, isn't this sunshine lovely, oooh and haven't the waves been nice. Bit annoying with the sea fog nestled into the north cornish coast this morning. The sat pic below shows just how localised it is.
It won't last all day I shouldn't have thought.

Eyes down on the Olympics then, tiz buzzing in London with lots of folk milling around wearing Locog outfits and more than one report of people spotting famous sportspeeps.

What'll the weather be doing? its a really tricky one to call at this stage - most of the model providers want to develop beefy showers across the far south-eastern corner of Kent, Essex and the lower Thames basin tomorrow afternoon. The Met Office's model swishes these showers off out into the Channel/North Sea in the evening but the European's keep them clinging on all evening. Its on the cusp though and I reckon it'll stay dry - there I've said it. DRY.

Wahooooooo

Some of the forecast charts have been hinting for the last few days that summer will is around the corner.

This seemingly endless run of depressing depressions, which have only been keeping the slugs happy, looks like shifting north by a few hundred miles towards the weekend. This is going to let high pressure in from the south-west which should mean there is some sunshine (wah-wooo) and even some south-esterly winds, something we haven't seen for a while. There's no real swell generators out there this week but at least it won't be raining.

Next week i see charts which could produce a solid 2 day swell,
as this low below...

.... might combine with this high early next week.